The easiest way to become an NFL General Manager is to just buy a team. That’s the path Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones took to the top. It worked out well for him early on mostly due to hitting a homerun with his first head coach Jimmy Johnson. Since then, it’s been tough sledding.
Despite taking a backseat in recent years to both his son Stephen and vice president of personnel Will McClay, the blame will always ultimately fall at the owner’s feet until they hoist another Lombardi Trophy. With that being the case, where does he rank among current GMs in the NFL? Mike Sando at The Athletic tried to figure that out. The list was broken down by tenure, with Jones falling in the first group, those with a decade or more on the job. Here’s his writeup:
The Cowboys won 63 percent of their games with three Super Bowl victories during the 1990s. They have won less than 52 percent of their games without reaching a Super Bowl since then, despite some successes in the draft. Jones earned a spot in the Hall of Fame on the strength of that 1990s success combined with his obvious business acumen, not for his accomplishments as a GM over the past couple decades. It’s no coincidence that the GMs with the worst won-lost records in this category own their teams.
It’s true that Jones has the second-worst record among his grouping, but it’s still .538 throughout the entirety of his NFL career. After all, people only keep their job that long if they’re successful or own the team. So where would Jones fall relative to the entirety of the NFL? Exactly in the middle at No. 16.
It becomes more dispiriting when looking at the amount of Pro Bowlers and First-Team All-Pros the Cowboys have selected since 1989, hitting at a rate near the top of the heap. His loyalty to Jason Garrett submarined the entirety of the last decade as well as the prime of former quarterback Tony Romo. Running the team like a family business might ruin the prime of Dak Prescott, too.
It’s time Jones heeds the words of another famous man with several facelifts by starting with the man in the mirror and asking him to change his ways.
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