Fish One-On-One w/ Jerry Jones
Fish One-On-One w/ Jerry Jones
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00:00The cap, the coach, the quarterback, I'm Mike Fisher, your trusty and trusty reporter.
00:06We are in Oxnard, California, our 35th straight year with the Cowboys at training camp and
00:11an opportunity for me to visit one-on-one and fire some fastballs at the Dallas Cowboys
00:20owner, beleaguered to some.
00:24He's in the happy-to-be-here club.
00:27If you listen to some of his comments over the course of his early time here at training
00:31camp at Oxnard, and he's got some insights into the way his brain is working on these
00:37three subjects.
00:38Jerry, if you please.
00:39Hanging around with Jerry Jones, a couple of things on your all-in, very clever.
00:46Because the conventional wisdom on all-in means we're committed, we're going for it.
00:51What you mean is we're all-in for 2024, and then we'll see, right?
00:56We all realize that certainly I can use expressions, one-liners, and obviously we need to have
01:08the background someone's coming for, the context it was coming from.
01:12Now, I really did mean that we're going to get it through to everybody, that it's about
01:19winning.
01:20This year, I don't want anything we can do, don't be thinking about three years from now,
01:25two years from now, anybody, we're going to go all-in this year.
01:30It has dictated a lot of any decisions I've made in the off-season.
01:35When it comes to the coaching staff, it's unorthodox to do that.
01:38Can it be a positive in terms of inspiration, or can it be a negative and a distraction?
01:43I've done my best work when I truly felt that it was on the line.
01:52I think you do.
01:53As a matter of fact, probably my worst work has been when I was pretty comfortable with
01:58my running game, and I didn't do as good.
02:01In other words, I'm better backed in the corner.
02:04I'm not trying to be insensitive, by the way.
02:06I'm really not about people, their lives, and what have you, but every person associated
02:13with this team, in my mind, is not uncomfortable with what tomorrow or next year will bring
02:19relative to their careers.
02:21That doesn't necessarily have to be with the Cowboys.
02:24Clarence, 28 years.
02:25I'm 35 years.
02:26We've heard you talk about tolerance for ambiguity.
02:28Again, it's very crafty, it's very clever.
02:31You kind of straddled the fence to me on your Dak Prescott comments, because on the one
02:35hand you said, I see him being here for the future.
02:38On the other hand, you said, hey, sometimes even a billionaire doesn't always get to buy
02:42what he wants.
02:43Exactly.
02:45And Dak, very artfully, has positioned himself to where he makes the call, and you have to,
02:56at the end of the day, we'll have to live with that.
02:59And I thought we had a good conversation at the press conference about what happens if
03:05Dak and our other two players are going to be paid at the top.
03:11And going forward, the 40% of the cast around them will only be getting 20% of the money.
03:18Those three will be getting 80% of all the money.
03:22And that's what it is.
03:24Can you sell your quarterback on the idea that we've got to be team friendly here?
03:28Oh, I don't know that, because Dak's looking at, well, what if I could go accomplish everything
03:35with a team that don't have those two top players on offense and defense, so they will
03:41allocate more to me.
03:43Now, what I will say to everybody is, because this is not like a boxing match, fighter,
03:50tennis, you've got to have a supporting cast around you.
03:54Nobody knows that leader, Dak Preston.
03:56He's the epitome.
03:58His style causes people to do better around him.
04:02He's that kind of leader.
04:04But by the same token, when you're sitting out here with all of the pro bowlers we've
04:10got and the supporting cast, if you look at the supporting cast that Dak has had last
04:15and during his career here, especially over on the offensive side of the ball, it has
04:20been outstanding by any measurement you want to add.
04:23Well, you can't give three players 75, 80% of the money and keep that happening around
04:29there, because we're drafting good players and the oddish people like that, and you can't
04:36go.
04:37There's not enough to go around.
04:38So you've got a way.
04:40Can you do that?
04:42Allocate that much money to that few people and still get to the playoffs and get to a
04:50Super Bowl?
04:51And at the end of the day, the Super Bowl is bigger than anybody or any player.
04:57And so we've got to always be looking at Super Bowl.
05:00Now, again, I don't have that answer.
05:03I don't have that answer.
05:05Like I said, when Clarence Hill asked me the question, he said, I said, I don't know what
05:10I was trying to say.
05:11I don't know the answer.
05:12Ask me tomorrow and maybe they'll come to me.
05:15Very good.
05:16I appreciate it.
05:17Thanks for watching.
05:20This is Jerry Jones, one on one with CowboysCountry.com at Athlon and the Fish Report on YouTube.
05:30Yes, tolerance for ambiguity in our one on one with Jerry and something that he has said
05:37in my presence and to me many, many times.
05:41I still take issue and I did to Jerry's face with this straddling the fence on Dak.
05:48The Cowboys can't have it both ways.
05:51But Jerry was very frank in saying that Dak Prescott is in the driver's seat.
05:55If Dak Prescott decides he wants to be here, he's here.
05:57If he decides he doesn't want to be here, then there you go.
06:01As I put it before, if Dak Prescott is more interested in the bag than he is in the boys,
06:07there is at this point not very much that Dallas Cowboys can do about it.
06:11I also dicker a little bit with the idea that the trio of Dak, Lamb and Parsons is going
06:18to take up 70 percent of their salary cap.
06:21That's inaccurate.
06:22But the point exaggerated, although it is.
06:26The point is that we're talking about a 55 or 60 million dollar quarterback.
06:30We're talking about a 35 million dollar wide receiver.
06:33We're talking about a 35 or 40 million dollar pass rusher.
06:36And oh, by the way, Stephen Jones did mention during the glory hole press conference yesterday
06:44that he suggested that all three guys are have it in their minds to become the highest
06:50paid guy at their position ever.
06:54Has that specifically come up in talks?
06:58I assume it has.
07:00But is it front of mind for Stephen Jones?
07:03It very clearly is.
07:05He also, by the way, mentioned the idea of using franchise tags and other tools on Micah
07:10and C.D. Lamb.
07:12That's all a little bit down the line.
07:14That's not part of the master plan.
07:16The Cowboys would like to avoid doing that.
07:19But Jerry Jones is making it very clear.
07:22His tolerance for ambiguity makes him not uncomfortable with not exactly knowing what's
07:28going to happen in a minute or tomorrow or next week regarding these contracts and all
07:34the rest of the things that he and the Cowboys and other owners and general managers and
07:38coaches have to deal with.
07:39He said it's a million things.
07:41I got to deal with a million things.
07:42Well, not quite a million, but it's a lot.
07:45We appreciate Jerry Jones a lot hanging out with us here on the program.
07:49Get much, much more at CowboysCountry.com and, of course, on the Fish Report at YouTube.
07:54Ian Oxnard with the Cowboys Fish, out.