I don’t despise him. I think he’s an interesting dude and I personally find the storyline of the Dallas Cowboys from 1989-1993 to be one of the most engrossing, fascinating team narratives in NFL history.
The main areas of my take on Jerry aren’t so different from most us. I do think he’s an egotistical, bombastic guy that can suck the air out a building, let alone a room, with his insatiable and immense desire for attention. I do think he trusts his opinion over other more qualified people too much. I do think he wants the bulk of the credit for any successful venture he’s involved.
With that said, I don’t think he’s an idiot. Far from it. I think one of the reasons Jones’ ego is so huge is because he feels like he’s the smartest person in the room most of the time and he’s probably right about that most of the time. Jerry Jones is very, very intelligent especially when you start talking about innate intuition and emotional intelligence like charisma. The man has been highly highly successful in some pretty cutthroat business environments.
I also don’t think he is a terrible GM. I wish he was an overtly terrible GM. He might step aside. As is, I think he’s an average GM. A mundane, boring, mediocre GM of average ability which in an indirect way speaks to Jones’ intelligence that he stepped into a football environment and has performed in this environment in an average capacity. Most people would have been swamped and overwhelmed and would have flamed out in spectacular fashion if they just walked off the street and tried to be an NFL GM. More so, Jones has more hardware than 90% of the GM’s who have ever been in the league which only fuels his ego because there is no planet in this universe where Jerry Jones isn’t going to take credit for three Lombardi trophies when he was the GM. So what we have here, imo, is a GM with average abilities holding hardware wildly out of alignment with his average abilities as a GM. Since Johnson quit and we won our last SB, the team has posted 199 wins with 187 losses (counting this year) with little to no postseason success. That’s average and decidedly better than many franchises in that time frame. This is why I say he’s average and also why I wish he stunk over and above being average. If we had the record of WSH under Snyder, I think Jerry’s competitive desire to win another SB might possibly override his ego and he’d step aside for a more qualified individual. As it is, being average with intermittent bouts of success since 1996 here and there, with the back drop of 3 Lombardi trophies that he is taking the bulk of the credit for, has left us with a GM of ordinary, middling, and second-rate talent coupled with an ego and immense personal confidence that won’t allow him to not believe he can get the job done.
So no. I don’t hate him. I see him for what he is and hope that Stephen is not the same man in intellect, charisma, and confidence that his father is and that he steps aside when the day comes that Jerry is no longer with us and brings in real football people that have been professionally developed and trained to run and coordinate an NFL franchise.
