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IRVING – There’s plenty to like about Stephen Jones.
The Dallas Cowboys executive vice president and director of player personnel is smart, personable and doesn’t mangle sentences like his dad.
But make no mistake: There’s still a lot of the father in the son.
That was clear Thursday, when the younger Jones boasted “we’ve put a team together we think can compete for a championship.”
So was he being a football man or a marketer when he said that at the end of a three-day minicamp?
Considering his DNA, it’s a safe bet it’s the latter.
The Cowboys are not yet a title contender. Not with their offensive line. Not with their lack of depth. Not with a quarterback in Tony Romo who has a 1-6 record in eliminations games. And not with a general manager in Jerry Jones whose record the past 17 years would have resulted in a firing anywhere else.
Now, this is not to say that if all goes well for Dallas next season it can’t finish with a winning record and make the playoffs for the first time since 2009. But, at this point, even under that best-case scenario, it’s hard to imagine the Cowboys leapfrogging the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers, the Seattle Seahawks or the Atlanta Falcons into the Super Bowl.
Such a sober assessment, however, doesn’t sell tickets, luxury suites or sponsorships, so the Joneses continue to talk like salesmen rather than serious students of the game.
“I feel like the teams that won championships last year, we could compete with them and we were right there, and I felt like we competed with them even without a full deck,” Stephen Jones said, referring to the injuries that decimated the defense last season. “So we have confidence this team will win a championship.”
All that sounds good until one studies the facts. Dallas, which finished 8-8 for the second straight season, went 1-5 against six playoffs teams in 2012, falling to the Seahawks, the Ravens, the Falcons and the Washington Commanders (twice). The lone victory was a 20-19 squeaker over the Cincinnati Bengals.
Jones’ other sales pitch: The last three Super Bowl winners – the Green Bay Packers (10-6) in 2010, the New York Giants (9-7) in 2011 and the Ravens (10-6) barely made the playoffs.
“You’re probably not being realistic,” Stephen Jones said, “if you don’t think things haven’t changed in 10 years in terms of, there is probably a lot of people who feel like they have a chance to win a championship based on the level playing field and how the salary cap has affected our game.
“We feel like we have an opportunity to compete for a championship. We need to stay healthy and we think we have good football players and we think we’ve improved our team this year. We’ve put some systems in place that benefit our personnel on both sides of the ball and we have a new specials teams coach. We expect to get better there. I think everybody has to get better if we want to win a championship, and that’s our goal.”
While Jones is right about the level playing field, he’s wearing rose-colored glasses if he thinks the Cowboys are going to stay healthy with so many key players seemingly injury prone (think Miles Austin, Sean Lee and DeMarco Murray).
As far as the new systems and coaches, why should that matter when Jerry Jones’ track record points to repeated failure with new systems and coaches? Again, the facts point to the Cowboys spending yet another season watching the Super Bowl from home. Among them: They have a mediocre 128-128 regular-season record with one playoff win since the start of the 1997 season.
With that kind of sad history, a wise football man would humbly say something like, “We’ve still got a way to go until we contend for a title. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, but we’re up to it.”
A marketer? He’d handle things just as Jones did Thursday.
Continue reading...
The Dallas Cowboys executive vice president and director of player personnel is smart, personable and doesn’t mangle sentences like his dad.
But make no mistake: There’s still a lot of the father in the son.
That was clear Thursday, when the younger Jones boasted “we’ve put a team together we think can compete for a championship.”
So was he being a football man or a marketer when he said that at the end of a three-day minicamp?
Considering his DNA, it’s a safe bet it’s the latter.
The Cowboys are not yet a title contender. Not with their offensive line. Not with their lack of depth. Not with a quarterback in Tony Romo who has a 1-6 record in eliminations games. And not with a general manager in Jerry Jones whose record the past 17 years would have resulted in a firing anywhere else.
Now, this is not to say that if all goes well for Dallas next season it can’t finish with a winning record and make the playoffs for the first time since 2009. But, at this point, even under that best-case scenario, it’s hard to imagine the Cowboys leapfrogging the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers, the Seattle Seahawks or the Atlanta Falcons into the Super Bowl.
Such a sober assessment, however, doesn’t sell tickets, luxury suites or sponsorships, so the Joneses continue to talk like salesmen rather than serious students of the game.
“I feel like the teams that won championships last year, we could compete with them and we were right there, and I felt like we competed with them even without a full deck,” Stephen Jones said, referring to the injuries that decimated the defense last season. “So we have confidence this team will win a championship.”
All that sounds good until one studies the facts. Dallas, which finished 8-8 for the second straight season, went 1-5 against six playoffs teams in 2012, falling to the Seahawks, the Ravens, the Falcons and the Washington Commanders (twice). The lone victory was a 20-19 squeaker over the Cincinnati Bengals.
Jones’ other sales pitch: The last three Super Bowl winners – the Green Bay Packers (10-6) in 2010, the New York Giants (9-7) in 2011 and the Ravens (10-6) barely made the playoffs.
“You’re probably not being realistic,” Stephen Jones said, “if you don’t think things haven’t changed in 10 years in terms of, there is probably a lot of people who feel like they have a chance to win a championship based on the level playing field and how the salary cap has affected our game.
“We feel like we have an opportunity to compete for a championship. We need to stay healthy and we think we have good football players and we think we’ve improved our team this year. We’ve put some systems in place that benefit our personnel on both sides of the ball and we have a new specials teams coach. We expect to get better there. I think everybody has to get better if we want to win a championship, and that’s our goal.”
While Jones is right about the level playing field, he’s wearing rose-colored glasses if he thinks the Cowboys are going to stay healthy with so many key players seemingly injury prone (think Miles Austin, Sean Lee and DeMarco Murray).
As far as the new systems and coaches, why should that matter when Jerry Jones’ track record points to repeated failure with new systems and coaches? Again, the facts point to the Cowboys spending yet another season watching the Super Bowl from home. Among them: They have a mediocre 128-128 regular-season record with one playoff win since the start of the 1997 season.
With that kind of sad history, a wise football man would humbly say something like, “We’ve still got a way to go until we contend for a title. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, but we’re up to it.”
A marketer? He’d handle things just as Jones did Thursday.
Continue reading...