If Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones could win Super Bowls as easily as he makes himself the center of conversation, he’d have more rings than fingers and toes.
Jones is the topic du jour again these days after the stunning trade of outside linebacker Micah Parsons, arguably the best defensive player in football.
Jones apparently is counting on this trade having an outcome similar to the Herschel Walker trade of 1989 that helped build a dynasty. For that to happen, the Cowboys would have to draft like coach Jimmy Johnson did in the early 1990s.
The move was curious because the Cowboys had considered themselves Super Bowl contenders. They received defensive tackle Kenny Clark and two first-round picks in return for Parsons, but there is no way to argue they are better today than last week. And the message the trade sent to fans and players is they should not expect the 29-year championship drought to end anytime soon. It isn’t the kind of deal expected from an 82-year-old owner/general manager.
Parsons isn’t the only Cowboys star whose negotiations with Jones were thorny.
“Sometimes Jerry will negotiate right down to the final dime with somebody,” Jones’ close friend Mike McCoy said in “King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones.” “It’s the point of proving that he can win. Then he’ll turn right around when the bargaining is over and he’ll give something back that you’ve been negotiating over for days. Sometimes it’s just like a game to him.”
In the Netflix docuseries “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” Jones says, “We do it our way, baby.”
And the Cowboys’ way is different than most.
However, some of it is reminiscent of the way Bears founder George Halas and Raiders owner Al Davis conducted their business.
Like Jerry Jones, Bears founder George Halas wasn’t afraid to let some of his biggest stars walk away. (Darryl Norenberg / USA Today)
Halas let future Hall of Famers Bronko Nagurski, George Blanda and Mike Ditka walk away rather than pay them. Nagurski, in fact, became a pro wrestler in 1938 over a $500 difference in negotiations.
When Ditka was the best tight end in the NFL in the early 1960s, Halas wouldn’t give him the salary he thought he was worth, and Ditka subsequently said Halas “threw around nickels like they were manhole covers.” Halas, who had survived the Great Depression by taking money out of the piggy banks of his two children, responded, “That is correct.”
Ditka was traded to the Eagles.
Davis, unlike Halas and Jones, didn’t have many notable contract disputes with players. But his parsimoniousness came out in the way he paid — or didn’t pay — coaches.
By 2002, Jon Gruden — “Chucky” as he was known to Raiders fans — was the brightest coaching star in the NFL. In the previous four years as coach of the Raiders, his record was 40-28. If not for a playoff loss to the Patriots, partly due to the famous “Tuck Rule” play, the Raiders would have been in the AFC Championship Game for the second straight season. Gruden’s success and popularity gave him negotiating leverage for a healthy raise.
Instead of paying him, Davis traded him to the Buccaneers, who beat the Raiders in the Super Bowl the following season.
Jones, Davis and Halas took many arrows late in their tenures. They were easy targets. Halas coached until he was 73. Jones’ Cowboys are 5-13 in the postseason since their last Super Bowl, with only one of the victories coming in the last six years. In the last eight years of Davis’ life, his Raiders were 54 games below .500.
Jones’ legacy is fascinating. Only one active owner — Robert Kraft of the Patriots — has more Super Bowl victories, and Jones has had a massive footprint on 31 teams besides his own. But perceptions of him have been colored by the Cowboys’ inability to get back to the level they were in the ’90s. The Parsons trade undoubtedly will color those perceptions further, one way or another.
The problem with being an owner/GM is that the owner has one less person to blame for failures.
The heat serves Jones well. It gives him fuel.
Davis was thin-skinned and barked back at anyone who took issue with his decisions. When he was an old man using a walker, he tried to physically intimidate a media critic.
Success shielded Halas from criticism for much of his long career, but the wolves started howling when he couldn’t get his team over the hump in the 1950s. That’s when he showed his cantankerous side.
Attention was important to all three.
Jones, unabashedly, is a promoter. “The Cowboys are a soap opera 365 days a year,” he said in “America’s Team.” “When it gets slow, I stir it up.”
In Halas’ case, he used attention to grow the league during eras when the NFL played second fiddle to Major League Baseball and college football. Halas typed press releases and personally delivered them to newsrooms.
Being the face of his franchise was vital for Davis. When he had to pass a billboard with head coach Gruden on it on his way to work every day, he couldn’t take it. The scenario was similar with running back Marcus Allen, who had become arguably the best running back in the NFL by the late 1980s and also the most popular Raider. At Davis’ behest, Allen was moved to fullback and forced to take a back seat to Bo Jackson, Roger Craig and Eric Dickerson.
Jones and Davis differed in how they dealt with attention. Davis was a sphinx, reveling in the mystery of silence.
Jones is transparent. He’ll answer all questions and is more available than any owner of anything in the history of everything.
If his Cowboys could control the ball the way their owner controls the news cycle, they’d lead the league in time of possession every year.
For Halas, the motivation was love of the game. With Jones, there was also love of the fame.
Davis was driven by love of the Raiders, his creation.
Jones has been criticized more than Halas or Davis for several reasons. Everyone is more criticized these days, given the growth of the game and the population of trolls. By talking so much, Jones exposes himself. And he was never afforded the credibility that Halas and Davis were because they were coaches.
Jones was an offensive lineman and captain for an Arkansas team that won the UPI national championship in 1964. He accumulated his wealth as a wildcatter and did his only coaching from his couch. But he has admitted to being a frustrated coach. He once told Sports Illustrated’s Frank DeFord that he “could have coached the s— out of this (Cowboys) team.”
Jones has often made his influence felt on the field by having a hand in the hiring of assistant coaches. When Barry Switzer took over for Johnson in 1994, he had to retain the assistants from Johnson’s staff. Switzer was allowed to hire Mike Zimmer to coach the nickel defense. Partly because Zimmer had the respect of Jones, he was retained by head coaches Chan Gailey, Dave Campo and Bill Parcells and then brought back years later under Mike McCarthy.
When Halas was coaching, he hired stellar assistants, including Ralph Jones, Luke Johnsos, Clark Shaughnessy, Hunk Anderson, George Wilson and George Allen. After stepping down as a coach, Halas still had a hand in the coaching staff. Six of the nine assistants on the 1985 Super Bowl Bears, including defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan and former Bears head coach Jim Dooley, were holdovers that Ditka agreed to retain at Halas’ request.
Davis famously hired many Raiders assistant coaches after he stopped formally coaching in 1966 to become the commissioner of the AFL. Some Raiders assistants, such as Fred Biletnikoff, Willie Brown and Art Shell, were former Raiders players. When Davis named Mike Shanahan head coach in 1988, Davis allowed him to bring in only three assistants: Alex Gibbs, Nick Nicolau and Pete Rodriguez. The rest were Davis hires. Shanahan fired two of Davis’ old-guard assistant coaches only to have Davis reinstate them.
Jones can be headstrong, but the truth is, he’s open-minded with his lieutenants. Johnson ran the fruitful drafts that laid the foundation for the Cowboys’ dynasty of the ’90s. When Parcells was the head coach of the Cowboys, he pushed for the Cowboys to draft tight end Jason Witten and pass rusher DeMarcus Ware. Jones allowed his son Stephen Jones, his personnel director, to talk him into drafting Zack Martin instead of Johnny Manziel in 2014.
Parcells said it was a misconception that Jones had to call all the shots.
“Jerry is a good businessman and a good listener,” he told Dallascowboys.com after he left the team. “What you have to do is make sense to him. … If he thinks you’re making sense, he’ll alter his opinion.”
Neither Jones, Davis, nor Halas was concerned about living in harmony, however.
Jones might have won more if he could have co-existed with Johnson.
Davis might have won more if he could have co-existed with Gruden.
Halas might have won more if he could have co-existed with his defensive coordinator, George Allen, who left because of a contract fight.
Raiders owner Al Davis, right, was a mentor to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. (James D. Smith / USA Today)
Davis was a mentor to Jones. During Jones’ first year as owner of the Cowboys, Davis often called Jones during the team’s struggles to offer encouragement.
Over the years, Davis and Jones spoke on the phone two or three times a month, with many of their calls lasting an hour or more. Jones told the Dallas Morning News that before the Cowboys of the ’90s started winning, he and Johnson considered trading wide receiver Michael Irvin and replacing him with Kelvin Martin. Davis told Jones he would be happy to trade for Irvin, but Jones needed to keep him.
An argument could be made that Jones would have benefited from Davis last week.
For Jones, it was a compliment to be compared to Davis. Both were drawn to splashy moves, and neither could resist a roll of the dice.
In 1982, Mike Haynes was one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL for the Patriots, a Pro Bowler and an All-Pro. The next season, he held out for a renegotiated contract. Davis acquired him in November for first- and second-round picks. The Raiders lost only one other game the rest of the season on their way to a Super Bowl championship, as Haynes and Lester Hayes became one of the greatest cornerback duos of all time.
A similar scenario played out in Dallas 13 years later. The Cowboys had lost to the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game the year before, so Jones poached cornerback Deion Sanders from the Niners and made him the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL. The Cowboys won Super Bowl XXX that year.
Davis was known for taking chances on players with histories that deterred other teams. Among those he acquired despite warning flags were Lyle Alzado, John Matuszak, Todd Marinovich and JaMarcus Russell.
Jones, meanwhile, has acknowledged being an ardent believer in what he considers player rehabilitation, and he’s shown it in his transactions, acquiring Charles Haley, Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens, Greg Hardy and others who gave most teams pause.
In 1995, Davis was intent on drafting linebacker Derrick Brooks after selecting running back Napoleon Kaufman with the 18th pick. He thought Jones would trade him the 28th pick, according to the book, “Al Davis: Behind The Raiders Shield.” Instead, Jones took a better offer from the Bucs, who selected Brooks.
“That one really surprised me because Al had an affinity for Jones,” former Raiders scout Bruce Kebric said. “One time, I was in Al’s office and Jones called. I remember Al saying to Jones. ‘There are not many people that I call a friend … but you’re one.”
Jones had such respect for Davis that when he countersued the NFL in 1990 for the freedom to cut independent marketing deals, Davis was the only team owner who was omitted from the lawsuit.
Jones and Halas probably did more to expand the NFL’s reach than anyone, except for former commissioner Pete Rozelle and current commissioner Roger Goodell. A plaque in Halas Hall, written by former team official Bill McGrane, reads: “By the sheer weight of enormous will, he (Halas) demanded that America pay attention to professional football.”
As AFL commissioner, Davis made AFL teams competitive with their NFL big brothers, which helped convince NFL owners that a merger was the wisest choice. And an expanded NFL has been a more powerful NFL.
Between Halas, Jones and Davis, the teams they touched won 15 championships. They also have three busts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which underscores the most prominent similarity between them — they were visionaries.
In light of the Parsons trade, some are pointing out that vision often deteriorates with age.
(Top photo: Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for Netflix)