Jimmy visits with Jason and Jerry

Jimmy Johnson leaves paradise reluctantly.

Of the dozen players he’s coached who have entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he’s never attended an enshrinement, so as to not favor one over another. And he doesn’t do public ceremony well, so even as he agreed to present Jason Taylor at Saturday’s induction ceremony, he passed on some traditional festivities. Like the parade down Main Street. “Why don’t you get someone in your family to sit in the convertible instead of me?” he asked Taylor.

But if Jimmy’s trip from Tavernier to Canton, Ohio, tells of a coach’s respect for his player, his other purpose for attending speaks of another emotion from another football chapter. Because if you ever wondered whether time actually does heal old, festering, publicly contentious and privately bubbling wounds, his plan to attend Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ Hall of Fame party seals it.

This trip actually was planned before Taylor asked his former coach to present him. The mending of an old feud between Jimmy and Jerry isn’t just news of national proportion. It’s a fine thing to do. It’s a statement of time and perspective and tying up loose ends that flapped in the public winds for decades — just as Jimmy and Jerry should do. As we all should do, really.

Jimmy’s view of Jerry’s achievements hasn’t changed.

“I’ve always had great respect for his

passion and what he’s accomplished,” he said.

He chuckles when asked if their relationship has changed.

“Our relationship is like a roller coaster,” he said. “It seems like whatever we talk about last can make it go up or down.”

They’re up right now. It started a year ago when Jerry admitted he was wrong for the way he treated Jimmy all those years ago. Jimmy then sent out a congratulatory tweet last winter about Jones making the Hall of Fame. At the 25th anniversary party of their Dallas Super Bowl teams, they talked and laughed.

“A good time — we all had fun,” Jimmy said.

It was that championship team Jimmy left in 1994. It would be like Bill Belichick having enough of New England owner Robert Kraft today. Jimmy turned around a 1-15 team and brought it to consecutive Super Bowl titles with a group in its prime.

Jerry was oddly jealous of the spotlight on Jimmy. He thought he deserved more acclaim. Jerry said in one infamous rant that “500 coaches” could win like Jimmy, which might have been true. But could 500 build that team as Jimmy did?

Winter descended between them. Jerry’s Cowboys have won two playoff games with five coaches in the two decades since Jimmy’s team stopped. Jerry isn’t getting in the Hall for his franchise building. He’s getting in because his business smarts made the league a lot of money.

And Jimmy? He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame, but it’s time he got into the Pro Football Hall, too. He won two Super Bowls, changed the NFL’s thoughts on size and speed, and now he has what amounts to an executive clinic in Tavernier, where team owners, coaches and general managers visit to pick his fertile brain on how to run teams. Cleveland Browns executive Paul DePodesta was the latest.

Jimmy’s tenure with the Dolphins is used against him.

“I get stuff on Twitter from fans saying, ‘Hey, you left us high and dry,’ or ‘You didn’t win here,’” he says.

No, he didn’t match the Dallas success in his four years in Miami. But he re-made the Dolphins roster, went to three postseasons, won two playoff games and left a roster of four young Pro Bowl players and one Hall of Famer. If a Dolphins coach did that now, there’d be a parade.

“I’m more concerned if I catch a big dolphin tomorrow than any of that,” Jimmy says. “The only concern I’ve got is I’ve just turned 74. I’m hoping to turn 75. When you get to this age, none of that [other] stuff matters.”

Taylor said there’s an easy reason he picked Jimmy to present him on Saturday.

“He picked me,” Taylor said in reference to Jimmy drafting him in 1997.

Jimmy’s reasoning to attend Jerry’s Hall of Fame party is more complicated. But, as he said, he’s 74. It’s time to remember the good times. And Dallas had plenty with him.

Dave Hyde