Entering the final quarter of a horrendous season has kickstarted a season of serious self-reflection for Cowboys players and coaches. Even owner Jerry Jones is looking around and taking stock of what he sees at team headquarters at the tail end of a disappointing year. And according to comments he made Friday morning on Dallas radio, the 78-year-old billionaire isn’t above also doing a little finger-pointing at the man in the mirror.
Speaking on 105.3 The Fan, Jones made a sobering admission about the team’s historically bad defense, manned up to his own role in the Cowboys’ 2020 failures, and suggested that the offseason would see repercussions coming for some within the organization… with one notable exception.
Jones is well aware that he is catching much of the flak for the Cowboys’ abysmal season, especially after revamping almost the entire coaching staff and overhauling significant chunks of the roster in hopes of reaching the Super Bowl for the first time in a quarter-century.
“You think anybody is talking sweet about me right now?” Jones asked hosts Kevin Hageland and Cory Mageors. “The one that should and does get heat in various forms. You don’t get a chance, when you don’t do it right, to touch that Lombardi Trophy. Do y’all have any idea how much I’d write a check for if I knew for sure I could get that Lombardi Trophy?”
Jones says he’s heard the buzz that grew even louder this week about the team’s perceived lack of effort and heart that’s brought them to the brink of being officially eliminated from postseason contention. But he cautions that not every player on the roster should be painted with the same brush, even though their 3-9 record has certainly been a collective letdown.
“When you have ups and downs and you don’t win, you can see people criticizing, quote, ‘Heart, effort.’ You can see that,” Jones said. “You can hear it if you want to listen to it. And that’s fair to say it. But, boy, I see guys trying to work the problem, trying to get better.”
‘I’d like to start again on how we approached our defense’
Normally the first and loudest to spin things in a positive light, Jones then took off the rose-colored glasses and was frank about the catastrophic shortcomings of the Dallas defense in Mike Nolan’s first year as coordinator.
“We’ve got, like anybody, you’ve got a lot of do-overs. I’d like to start again on how we approached our defense this year. I’d like to start that over again. I’m sure everybody else would, too.”
“I’d start right there, the first day,” Jones continued. “I would really make sure that any changes we were making, I would want to make sure that we did it in the same way that we didn’t make changes on offense, because we didn’t think that we had the situation or we had the time to make those changes and [have] it really be effective.”
In other words, the Cowboys offense was left largely intact. Some of that was due simply to the retention of Kellen Moore as coordinator. But little else was altered, thanks to the scrapping of minicamp, the nixing of preseason games, and the virtual nature of offseason work that kept McCarthy and his new staff from even meeting their players face-to-face until the regular season was looming. They didn’t re-invent the wheel because they were already racing the car.
Defensively, however, the team tried a total rebuild. Nolan’s seismic shift in his unit’s core scheme- with minimal time to make the switch- resulted in a Cowboys defense that’s been more porous than any in franchise history.
Everything changed except the players. It’s as if Nolan took over a kitchen stocked with everything he’d need to make wedding cakes. But he insisted on making chicken pot pies instead, using the same ingredients.
‘You’ve got to make changes’
Jones reminisced about a time the team underwent a similar evolution, just before the 2005 draft.
“We went from a 4-3 to a 3-4 defense. But when we did it, it was very reluctant. Lot of reluctance on making that move by our head coach. His name was Bill Parcells. So he had a tough time buying into drafting DeMarcus Ware. He wanted to draft [Marcus] Spears because Spears fit both ways, 4-3 or a 3-4. DeMarcus Ware was principally going to the 4-3. All we did was turn around and have the greatest draft, probably, we’ve ever had on defense and drafted Spears and Ware and [Jay] Ratliff and [Chris] Canty. And we were able to make the move right then and there. Had we not drafted those guys, that would have been a tough move, and probably, we wouldn’t have gone into it as completely. That’s speculation. But there’s a case. You’ve got to think about the personnel when you talk about changing your scheme.”
The Cowboys didn’t do that. Not really. Sure, they brought in a few hired guns in Gerald McCoy, Dontari Poe, and HaHa Clinton-Dix to theoretically help make the transition to Nolan’s new plan. McCoy was lost for the season within the first few days of practice. Clinton-Dix was cut before opening day. Poe lasted seven games.
The remaining players have struggled to adapt to the new direction. Dallas is in the bottom ten leaguewide in total yards allowed. They are tied for second-worst in takeaways. They rank dead last in both rushing yards allowed and points allowed.
“We’ve obviously done some things, we’ve changed, and we’re having a hard time getting those in place to be a good defense. You’ve got to make changes,” Jones admitted.
You’ve got to make changes.
That’s a startling and ominous declaration with four games to go. Jones was then asked if that need for change extends to the coaching staff who hasn’t even been in place a full year.
“Every bit of it,” Jones interrupted before the question was fully out. “Every bit of it. And then right past that, go right to your general manager. Right past that, go to your general manager. Because coming through the door, the GM was eye-to-eye hiring the head coach, talking about how we were going to approach when he walks through the door and where he was going to go from there. That’s what you do. That obviously didn’t work for us this year.”
Whoa.
Jones just threw himself under the bus as the team’s general manager. He’s roundly criticized for being too involved in the football operations; many wish he would just be the mysterious man in the luxury box who writes the checks and leaves the Xs and Os to someone else. But as self-appointed GM, too, Jones has nowhere to hide.
‘I will change. I can change.’
Jones has always relished his dual role within the organization. Faced with the reality of a season so bad that the networks are dumping Cowboys games from their primetime slots, though, Jones has no choice but to take a long, hard look at the mess that 2020 has become in Dallas… and fess up to being solely responsible for allowing it to happen.
“There’s nobody in any better shape to take any part of it and use it to try win the ball games,” Jones said on-air. “Not only the selection of the head coach, but the players that are playing the game, and the coaches that are coaching them. All of that has to have my approval. So you start right there. And I accept that.”
It would have been a fine place to end the interview, with Jones solemnly taking his lumps for an organization in disarray. And the K+C Masterpiece hosts tried to end it there. But Jones jumped back in as the jocks were attempting to sign off, making it plain that, just in case any fans actually believed this unmitigated disaster of a season would be some sort of last straw that not even Jones would be able to ignore, he would, in fact, continue to be both owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys.
“When you work for yourself, there’s no firing him. You’ve got to change him. And he’s got to change the direction he’s going,” Jones cryptically offered. “I’ve worked all my life for myself, but I’ve had to change direction many times. So I will change. I can change.”
Change is coming to the Cowboys. That much seems assured. Exactly what– and who else– Jones will change remains to be seen.
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