The Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager recently did a radio appearance with 105.3 the Fan after the Cowboys’ demoralizing 47-9 loss against the Detroit Lions. When asked direct questions about the constructed roster and his inactivity during the offseason, Jones got defensive and insinuated that he could threaten the jobs of the on-air personalities. Technically, Jones can’t do that as the talent of 105.3 the Fan aren’t employed by Jones, but also, they did nothing wrong. All they did was ask Jones reasonable questions any team supporter would have. Before his appearance on air, Jones has been in the crosshairs of the fanbase more than usual, asking for Jones, the general manager, to be fired.
While there’s credence to Jones’ job as general manager needing to be under scrutiny, let’s understand from his perspective why he would be so defensive of his actions as general manager. For starters, since purchasing the team, he has won three Super Bowls and has been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame while having a franchise worth $11 billion and the most visible brand in sports. To many, it’s a crowning achievement. Yet, for the core football fans, those are relics of the past and superficial accolades that only benefit Jones and his family.
Take AT&T Stadium, for example. Nearly everything about the stadium and its artwork is an homage to himself and his family. It’s easier to see why Jones, now at 82 years old, would be content, if not combative, of his standing as owner and general manager of the team. Aside from Mike Brown of the Cincinnati Bengals, no other owner in the NFL occupies a similar role as an owner and is heavily involved in football operations. Also, what other owner holds court among reporters weekly after their team has played?
Likely because of his success, sometime in the last 15 years, Jones, the general manager, got complacent. Worse, he was able to sell to a large faction of the fans that his complacency was justified and the best direction for the team. The Cowboys have an aversion to free agency and refuse to sign external help at the top of the market price. Everyone can point to the last time the Cowboys spent a hefty penny on a free agent, and that was when they signed Brandon Carr to a five-year, $50-million-dollar contract. Since that transaction, the Cowboys have taken a back seat in free agency, opting to supplement their roster with lesser talent at a much cheaper cost and relying on the draft to get the most out of their roster.
The Cowboys were a rudderless ship in the immediate future after Troy Aikman retired. There was no quarterback, no leadership, and, more importantly, no hope. Fast forward to when the Cowboys had Tony Romo as their starter: With this new approach of thrifty spending and a viable quarterback, Jones and the Cowboys could position themselves as a viable challenger to make the playoffs and avoid the term cap hell.
This has been proven to be more of a myth than ever in the modern NFL and has been disproven in many instances. The idea of cap hell is where an NFL team is so underwater in bloated contracts and dead cap money that it’s a place they cannot get out of for years due in part to reckless free-agent spending. For optimistic fans, Jones exploited this fear and coerced fans into thinking that the Cowboys would always have a fighting chance with a good quarterback. Romo covered a lot of the team’s warts with his proficiency at quarterback, including an atrocious defense in 2012. As has Dak Prescott, winning two playoff games and four division titles.
Dating back to Romo, Dallas fielded a team that can win in the regular season but taper off in the postseason. For a long time, Jones’ fear tactic enabled some fans to be content participating in crucial games late in the regular season and the early stages of the postseason, so long as the team wasn’t awful. Jones then created an illusion that free agency spending meant taking risks and spending more money on external resources at the expense of being terrible in the following years. Nonetheless, when you examine how much the Cowboys have spent in free agency, you can’t believe the Jones are trying to field a serious football operation. Here’s what our own One Cool Customer discovered when assessing the Cowboys’ spending habits.
I looked hard, but could not find the 2020 data, so we’ll have to do without. Again the NFLPA provides the data for 2021 , 2022 , 2023 . The data for all three years is summarized in the table below.
So there you have it. Over the last three years, the Cowboys rank 30th in cash spending. $84 million behind ultra-stingy Dan Snyder, $93 million behind the league average, $121 million behind the Eagles, and a mind-blowing $223 million behind Cleveland.
The Cowboys, like it or not, have spent less cash on their team over the last decade than almost any other NFL team. They ranked 25th in cash spend from 2013-2016, 32nd from 2016-2019, and 30th from 2021-2023. That’s as clear a pattern as you’re going to get.
Is this a front office that is “all-in”? Is this even a front office that is interested in winning? Or, as Joey Ickes argues, is this a family office that is in it for the money more than for any fancy title?
To make matters worse, Jones has weaponized not spending money on free agents against his own players. Think about it. When any of the Cowboys players are up for a new contract, Jones uses the greatest weapon in his arsenal to turn fans against the player: the media. Routinely, Jones will drag out contract negotiations and leak out contract figures to the media to paint the players as greedy and then use them as scapegoats as to why the Cowboys cannot afford free agency. Doing so is unfair to the player but also elongates the process, ultimately raising the cost of doing business by not getting the deal done sooner.
Again, for some fans, that tactic is convincing enough to misdirect their ire at the players versus Jones and their decision-makers. However, when looking at teams like the Philadelphia Eagles, who always find money in free agency, or the Los Angeles Rams. They aggressively spent in free agency and traded draft picks for veterans, won a Super Bowl in 2021 and a short three years later, their rebuild looks promising with Puka Nacua and Kyren Williams as long as they find a long-term future quarterback. Jones doesn’t want to spend in free agency because he knows he doesn’t have to. So long as the fans can blame the players, he can rake in the money, and the team can be good enough to play in marquee matchups, all is well.
Precisely how Jones can avoid free agency and still have a good enough team is simple. With Will McClay in the building, the Cowboys are, in fact, good at drafting players, especially in the early-to-middle portions of the draft. Jones often banked on buying a fringe free agent starter and desperately hoped that a draft pick could take the role away from the veteran without ever having to commit serious money to the veteran. Here’s one example. In 2017, the Cowboys signed Nolan Carroll, a cornerback with limited starting experience from the Eagles. Dallas handed him a modest three-year, $10M contract, which still was the most expensive contract they paid to a free that offseason while drafting Chido Awuzie and Jourdan Lewis in the second and third rounds, respectively. Predictably, Carroll didn’t pan out, and Awuzie took the job eventually, although he had growing pains as a rookie. This model is exactly why the Cowboys stagnate just enough to be watchable but not be a serious threat in the postseason.
It’s a cycle. Dallas still plays in meaningful games, satiating fans who would proudly exclaim, “At least we’re not the Browns.” When they lose in the postseason or late in the regular season, those same fans could point to the high-priced player they had been conditioned for months to put all the blame on, and the vicious circle continued. What’s happening now and is likely what’s gotten Jones so angsty in the media is that many are starting to wake up to his stingy and lazy patterns: Proclaiming to go all-in, then do next to nothing to improve the roster, using low-cost draft picks to play far above their salaries, before villainizing them to the fans for asking for the money they deserve.
That’s not even including the trolling of his fan base by revealing days of the past of what the franchise used to be, yet gushing over a new endorsement deal that is more important than a championship. There’s no one more upset than somebody who has realized they have been deceived, and now the largest fanbase in sports that Jones profits at the expense of, while not his best to satisfy them, is letting him know the jig is up. The voices of many are now growing louder and louder and becoming harder to ignore. The hustle has been exposed is up and it’s about damn time.
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