Yes, he says he still has the keen mind of a man much younger.
But by the Gregorian calendar, Jerry Jones turns 76 years old exactly one month from today. And there is no outrunning the clock.
At the denouement of seemingly every Dallas Cowboys game, a quasi-sacred ritual takes place. Owner Jones bursts from the locker room and stands amongst the media to deliver his version of the day’s events.
Like he was a coach or something.
Cameras roll. Pencils scribble. We huddle around Jones as if he’s about to reissue the Beatitudes. Or at the very least, render the last word on something Dez Bryant said.
Yet, after Sunday’s deflating 16-8 defeat in Charlotte – Jones’ 30th season opener as Cowboys owner – Jerry elected to take the back door.
He explained his absence during his weekly show on flagship station 105.3 The Fan:
“I really didn’t want to get into any conversation about [Randy] Gregory. I had made my mind up really before the game that I wouldn’t visit, because I knew his situation would come up.
“It had nothing to do, as far as I’m concerned, with visiting with the media regarding the loss. I’ve done that a skillion times, as you know.”
Yeah, well. Whatever.
Does anyone really think that if the Cowboys had begun the season with a roar and knocked off a playoff contender such as Carolina, Jones wouldn’t have emerged from the locker room to extol the greatnesses of Jason Garrett, Dak Prescott, Zeke Elliott, et al?
Of course he would have. The Gregory excuse is almost laughable.
But Jones’ team played a crappy game. The quarterback that he built the offense around, the linemen that he emptied his wallet for and the coaching staff that Jones swears by all had no discernible positive impact.
To give a proper perspective, the game reminded me of a Sunday 29 years ago in New Orleans – the first game of Jerry’s first season as owner. Jim Mora’s Saints smothered Dallas 28-0 and the Cowboys gained only 174 yards.
That team had Troy Aikman and Jimmy Johnson, and a glorious franchise resurrection would come four years later.
And this team has . . . well, what exactly?
It is reckless, granted, to flush away a season’s hopes after one opening defeat, no matter how inept a team appeared. But some of the insufficiencies that showed up Sunday in Carolina were first fingered even before the draft.
Who was quarterback Prescott going to throw to, with Bryant released and Jason Witten retired? How consistent would the offensive line be, with a rookie guard thrust into the mix?
A prudent, more methodical approach to the preseason would surely have helped the Cowboys, one would think.
But as Jones said on his radio show, “I think generally because of the way we’re doing preseason, limiting contact throughout the league, all of those things take their toll on preparation and continuity. But I think it’s made up for in availability. Availability of players is real close to being right there with talent of players.”
Jones added, “We’d love to have won that game in Carolina. It would’ve been a big win for us. A big win for us with a young team would have been a nice springboard.
“But it didn’t happen. You have to take these feelings, these mistakes, and you have to improve those and get better.”
Yeah, well. But Jerry could have easily said that outside the locker room Sunday.
Instead, he fled. He had to be darkly discouraged after seeing his team so soundly muzzled.
Another season, another loss.
Here’s the larger problem, though. If you go back to last season and the eight-sack loss in Atlanta, you can make a solid case that the Cowboys’ troubles now go back nine games.
The 27-7 loss to the Falcons came Nov. 12. Dallas won two games over the final seven weeks, but its point totals in the losing five games were 9, 6, 20, 12 and 6 – that’s four touchdowns.
But what was the thinking in the owner’s suite Sunday as he watched Prescott struggle to move the chains?
“I kept thinking that on the next possession it would look like it did in preseason, when we had our first group in there against the other team’s first group, when we put together well-coordinated drives and went down the field,” Jerry told the flagship station.
Ah, yes. The preseason’s 10 minutes of glory. If you blinked, you missed it.
It’s hard to feel sorry for a man who Forbes says is worth $7 billion, especially when so much of Jones’ football miseries are his own doing. But that had to be discouragement that led Owner Jones, soon to be 76, and son Stephen to the locker room’s back door Sunday, not Randy Gregory’s drug tests.
It must have been a quiet flight home from Charlotte.
Another new season, another loss.
And all that clock ticking.
