Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has been a good owner. He has spent money on players and practice facilities. He has made sure the team has a nice stadium to play in. It is his choice in upper management that has been suspect. In particular, he has hired a general manager and a head of player personnel who have overspent on players, made poor talent decisions at times, and undervalued certain positions.
That general manager’s name is Jerry Jones. That’s right, Jones is his own GM. He is also the team president. His COO and EVP of Player Personnel is his son and co-owner, Stephen. Here is why Jerry needs to fire himself and his son from player operations roles and hire someone outside of his family to evaluate and sign talent.
When it comes to player contract negotiations, the Jones family constantly overpays. It is great that they are willing to pay top dollar for talent. That isn’t the problem. The issue is that they wait too long to do it. They always wait until the last minute to sign their players to new contracts. This enables other stars to sign contracts that reset the market price for their positions.
A perfect example of this is happening right now. Pass rusher Micah Parsons is in the last year of his rookie contract. Dallas has known for ages that both sides wanted Parsons to stay with the team long-term. He pushed for a new contract early on. The Joneses waited. In March, Myles Garrett signed a four-year, $160 million extension with the Browns. This week, T.J. Watt signed a new deal with the Steelers for three years and $123 million. There is no way, now, that Parsons signs for less than Garrett and Watt. Why would he?
This is not the first time in recent memory that the Cowboys have been forced to overpay because they waited too long to work out a deal. One only needs to look back to last September when quarterback Dak Prescott signed a four-year, $240 million deal right before the opening kickoff of the regular season. Prescott is the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, ahead of names like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson. This is despite Prescott missing significant chunks of time due to injury in three of the past five seasons.
Prescott’s deal came right after his favorite target, wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, signed his new four-year, $136 million extension in late August of 2024. Both Prescott and Lamb signed after other top players at their positions signed big deals that reset the market. Prescott and Lamb are both excellent players, but Dallas could have paid less to retain them had they not waited so long to do it.
The Cowboys haven’t had a starting running back average more than 67 yards per game since 2019, the last year of Ezekiel Elliott’s prime. The team ranked 27th in yards per carry in 2024. How much better would the Dallas offense have been during that span with a running attack? How much pressure would that have taken off Prescott (and his backups after he got hurt)? How much would a solid ground game have slowed opposing pass rushers? Cowboys fans may never know.
The Jones clan has made it clear that they are not that interested in getting a top running back. Since that 2019 season, they have passed on Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, Aaron Jones, and Derrick Henry (twice). They passed on D’Andre Swift, Miles Sanders, and other second-tier backs. Instead, the Cowboys banked on unproven backs like Deuce Vaughan, Rico Dowdle, and Tony Pollard becoming stars. Jerry and company even brought back a washed-up Ezekiel Elliott in 2024. By December, he had released Elliott. Maybe if the Joneses spent less on other positions, they could afford a quality running back.
Dallas has not made the best decisions evaluating talent and character over the past dozen years. Famously, the elder Jones had an infatuation with Johnny Manziel. He desperately wanted to draft the Texas native in 2014, but luckily, his son talked him out of it at the last second. Even after Manziel was a complete bust for the Browns, Jerry was rumored to want to sign him as a backup. The fascination with failed quarterbacks played out again in 2024 when the team traded for Trey Lance, whom the 49ers had drafted third overall in 2021. They paid Lance $5.31 million for the season, only to decide that he was not worth the fourth-round pick they gave the Niners.
Perhaps the most egregious example of poor personnel judgment occurred when the team signed defensive end Greg Hardy in 2015. He had been convicted of domestic violence. Hardy and his lawyers filed an appeal, and they reached a civil settlement with the victim. She failed to appear in court for the appeal, and Hardy’s lawyers eventually got his record expunged. The NFL league office suspended him for ten games after reviewing the very clear and very public evidence. Once again, Hardy’s team appealed, and the league reduced the suspension to four games.
The Cowboys then signed Hardy to a one-year, $11.3 million contract. Jerry Jones defended the Hardy signing publicly. After his suspension, his on-field performance was good, but his off-field behavior was not. Hardy was constantly late for team meetings and was a cancer in the locker room. He made several inappropriate posts on social media. Hardy was arrested in Texas after the season and charged with cocaine possession. He never played in the NFL again.
Hardy is far from the only Cowboys player to have issues over the past 10 years. Besides him, ten other Dallas players have been suspended by the league. Of those ten, three players were suspended multiple times: Rolando McClain (three times), Randy Gregory (four times), and David Irving (three times). How do you keep a player after two suspensions? There may be one more to add to that list after Pro Bowl return specialist KaVontae Turpin was arrested for drug and gun charges on July 6.
Jerry Jones has been in the news more than his team, and that is not always a good thing. It is time that he and his son give up the reins and just sit in the owner’s box. Enough with the controversies. Enough with choosing players based on talent alone and not the enormous baggage that they might bring with that talent. Enough with paying players extra because you got lazy and waited until the last minute to sign them to extensions. It is time to hire a GM and a head of player personnel who know the game and not just hunches, gut feelings, and hometown biases.
Dallas fans, myself included, deserve better. The Cowboys are not “America’s Team” anymore. It is time for 82-year-old Jerry Jones to admit that he and his son are not what is “best for business.” There is a reason that Dallas has not won a Super Bowl since 1996. They are the reason. Prescott is not a $60 million-per-year quarterback. Running backs are a vital part of a good offense. You can’t spend half your salary cap on three players in the NFL. That will nearly be the case when they extend Parsons now, if the 2026 salary cap ends up being what it is projected to be by the league.
It is time for Jerry and Stephen to fire Jerry and Stephen. The fans have been calling for it for years. It is time to put football people in charge of football things, and let the Jones family just write the checks. An oil and gas tycoon and a chemical engineer should not be making football decisions. If the Joneses were football people, they would know that. They aren’t, and they don’t. So, Cowboys fans, keep the calls strong. Make those chants at home games. Tweet those tweets. Let ownership know how you feel, loud and clear, because if you don’t, don’t be surprised when Dallas underachieves again in 2025 and for years to come.
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