Jones still preaching win-now message
Just down the road from the beach, on the last summer morning before limitless possibilities again start giving way to irrevocable results, the billionaire in the shade looked out at the sportswriters in the sun.
“We all had a chance to go sell insurance,” Jerry Jones said Tuesday. “Or we all had a chance to go build houses, or we all had a chance to do some other things. We’ve really chosen, and that’s our brotherhood, to spend our life in the excitement and the conversation and the rubbing elbows.”
This is how the Dallas Cowboys open their training camp in Oxnard, Calif., every year, with the owner reminding everyone that there are worse places to be.
It’s been almost 28 years since the last time the Cowboys won a Super Bowl, and it’s been just as long since they’ve even played for a conference championship. That means there’s a temptation to greet the start of a new season with talk of A Sense of Urgency, or Taking the Next Step, or Going All-In, but the truth is, to most fans, those thematic titles are as worn-out as the VHS copy of Super Bowl XXX. And to Jones’ credit, when a reporter asked him Tuesday if he feels like he’s running out of time, he didn’t bite.
“There was urgency in 1989,” Jones said. “I never thought there was time to slough off.” Translation?
Yes, the Cowboys are in winnow mode, but they always have been. It’s just that for a quarter-century or so, they haven’t been very good at it.
They have a chance to be really good in 2023, especially in an NFC that doesn’t feature Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees or Brett Favre.
Still, this isn’t a matter of a long-term rebuilding project coming together on schedule. The Cowboys are the kind of team that seems to have a different master plan every year, and part of that is evidenced in this season’s big change.
Now, in addition to his duties as head coach, Mike McCarthy will call offensive plays, too. And when Jones explained the reasoning for it, he went out of his way to say that the decision had nothing to do with any perceived shortcomings of the previous coordinator, Kellen Moore.
“It wasn’t what Kellen wasn’t,” Jones said. “It’s what Mike is. I think we gain on it.”
It will, at the very least, contribute to “the conversation.” If it works, and Dak Prescott emerges as an elite quarterback, Jones will be a genius. If it’s a disaster, well, people will be talking about the Cowboys then, too.
That’s how it’s always been, and Jones seems to get as much of a kick out of it now as he did when he bought the team. He loves the attention, win or lose, and this is what he was talking about when he mentioned the other businesses that could have occupied his time over the years.
“I’m old enough that I’ve had a couple of other areas that I got to spend some time in, a couple of other lives, if you will,” Jones said. “I like this one right here.”
And if all of “the excitement and the conversation and the rubbing elbows” he hailed ends up in another disappointment? Next summer, he’ll be back to remind everyone again of how much worse it could be.