Jones won’t be firing himself as GM
DALLAS — John Elway had a hand as quarterback or executive in all three of Denver’s Super Bowl titles, making him king of Colorado by acclimation. Basically, he was Roger Staubach and Tex Schramm in one tall, toothy package. But in the wake of four losing seasons since he last hoisted a Lombardi Trophy, Elway fired himself Monday.
All he ever wanted was for the Broncos “to win and get better,” and when he realized he was no longer up to it, he decided to let someone else try.
Jerry Jones’ conscience apparently isn’t as acute.
Assuming, of course, he hasn’t had it removed.
Before getting to the obvious after one of the biggest crashes in Cowboys history, let me just say to all those who continue to gripe that the media isn’t holding Jerry accountable for this mess:
Are you kidding?
Over the last two decades, I’ve written a hundred or more columns slinging shots at Jerry for some catastrophe or another. In all that time, I’ve spent more time cooking up one-liners at Jerry’s expense than on poems for the lovely wife.
One fan only writes occasionally, and then only to call me gutless. Another asked yesterday if I was afraid of Jerry. Afraid? Look, I may not be the man I used to be, or even the man I think I used to be, but I like my chances against a guy breathing down 80.
The reason we don’t blame Jerry more often is that once you’ve made your point, what’s the use of hammering? As a carpenter once told me, pointing to the indentations in the wood around a driven nail, “Don’t make monkey marks.”
Once you’ve established that Jerry is the root of the Cowboys’ evil, what’s the use of saying it over and over? Should we stand in front of Jerry’s digs on Preston Road with a sign reading, “The end is near”?
Do you really think that one day as he’s reading this stuff over his oatmeal, he’ll look up and say, “Golly, Gene, ol’ Kev is right. Wake up Stephen and tell him we need to go hire us a sure-enough GM.”
For the umpteenth time: Jerry’s not going anywhere. He bought the Cowboys so he could run them. He doesn’t want to coach them, as some of you insist. Coaching is dirty work, and the hours are long. What Jerry wants is the credit that Jimmy Johnson denied him.
Jerry’s got plenty of warts as is, but that’s not enough for some of you who insist on the craziest conspiracies. You concede that Jerry loves money, then say he doesn’t care about winning.
Can you see the conflict? Jerry knows better than anyone that the more he wins, the more money he makes in ticket and merchandise sales. Another old trope: His coaches are stooges. Never mind that that’s also a basic hindrance to winning. Now, there may have been a couple of questionable hires since Jimmy. OK, maybe more than a couple. But one of them subsequently won a Super Bowl and two others came with Lombardis, including the current occupant.
Frankly, the reason sportswriters spend more time criticizing Mike Mccarthy than Jerry these days is because it’s fresh material. Plenty of it, too.
If you want to blame Jerry for something, start with the fact that he’s always been too enamored with stars. It’s why he’s always spent more money on the offensive side of the ball. It’s why he’ll pay Dak Prescott and keep Zeke Elliott.
He thinks stars sell, and he’s got a point. But they don’t always win. Not on their own, anyway. You need quality depth behind those big dollars up front. Jerry runs the Cowboys less like a football team than a Broadway show.
He’s also countenanced a culture that’s not always conducive to winning. He clearly doesn’t insist enough on attention to detail. He doesn’t seem to understand or care about chain of command. He likes some players better than his coaches, and it shows. Talent looms too large in his evaluations, to the detriment of most other considerations. He pardons like a lame-duck president.
Chief among Jerry’s sins: He’s far too optimistic for his good or the Cowboys’. He always thinks he’s this close. If your outlook is always so rosy, how can you fix the problem?
And the problem, bottom line, is the GM. That’s what Jerry and some of you don’t seem to get. Any criticism of a coach or a player is a criticism of the GM. He’s the one who hired the staff and acquired the players. John Elway gets it, which is why he’s now moving upstairs and finding someone else to make the tough calls.
The difference, of course, is that Elway remains a football god in the Rockies. His status is secure. On the other hand, nobody likes a GM, at least not for long and certainly not after 35 years.
Had things gone differently and Jerry’s first coach not been so hard-headed, maybe it wouldn’t have come to this. Maybe if ol’ helmet hair had shared the credit, Jerry wouldn’t have hung on in search of another Lombardi. I like it. Until further notice, leave me out of this and take it up with Jimmy.