BTB: The Evolution Of Jerry Jones Part 1

[Iamtdg]

BTB: The Evolution Of Jerry Jones Part 1


The Evolution Of Jerry Jones Part 1

by Tom Ryle on Jun 30, 2012 9:14 AM CDT in Dallas Cowboys General



Perspective. It is hugely important. Different people, looking at the same exact thing from different viewpoints, will come away with wildly divergent opinions of what they saw. It's like the old fable of the seven blind men and the stripper, who all . . .

Wait. I may have a detail or two wrong there.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I am often totally mystified by the things I see in the media, particularly the national media, when they talk about the Dallas Cowboys. I wonder if they are even looking at the same team I am. It can be the constant drone of how Tony Romo is just not an NFL caliber quarterback, which flies in the face of what I can see and what the numbers indicate. It can be how talented and loaded this team was in the past few years, and I look at the roster and just shake my head. (You can see Chris Canty and Stephen A. Smith illustrating these in the video here.) But always, no matter who is on the field for the team, or wearing headsets on the sideline, one story just goes on and on, no matter what else happens:

Jerry Jones is impulsive and insists on running the team himself. He will never give his head coach the power to really take charge. He will never change.


That came up again, and OCC covered it in his article about Jason Garrett being number six on a list of coaches on the hot seat in the NFL. I remember first seeing that headline and wondering what Bizarro world I had fallen into. It was 180 degrees from the understanding I have of the relationship between Jerry, his son Stephen, and Jason. It was an assumption of short-term thinking in an organization that has committed itself to long-term planning and behavior. It assumed an underlying discord on a team that is showing better harmony between owner and coach than it has had since sometime very shortly after Jerry bought the team, and his honeymoon with Jimmy Johnson was still going on.

There is a reason, of course. The national media types, like Eric Edholm in the article OCC was dissecting, cover all 32 teams, which by definition means superficially. We here at Blogging The Boys focus nearly to the point of obsession on the Dallas Cowboys, following every report, tweet, interview, hint, rumor, and wild speculation about our team with avid and unrelenting interest. So it is expected that we would see things that the league-wide reporters would miss.

But, as was evident from reading the comment thread on that article, we don't all see eye to eye here, either. I think I know what is going on with Jerry and Jason, and I have a pretty good theory about how and why their relationship came about. I wanted to lay that out, and see if the readers see things the way I do, or if they have an entirely different perspective.

I'm breaking this into two parts. The first deals with Jerry and his coaches from Jimmy Johnson through Dave Campo.


First, I want to acknowledge that some of the things I was mulling over in the wee hours of last night when I started thinking about Jerry Jones' history (I had seen that OCC was working on his post, but hadn't read it yet) came up in some of the comments. A lot of people said things very similar to what I want to cover. I can't cover all of them, but ScarletO actually provided a pretty good outline and very similar thoughts in one comment, so I have to acknowledge that. Click the link on his screen handle to check it out.


The thing that strikes me about all the things people say about Jerry is that at one time or another, they were pretty much correct. The problem, of course, is that they were correct in the past, but are not correct now. Before I go over the timeline of Jerry and his head coaches, and how things have developed and evolved to get to the current situation, I have to address one thing that really rankles me.

There is a frequent underlying assumption that Jerry Jones is basically a bumbling, stupid incompetent. I have always suspected that at least part of that is because he still has that Arkansas drawl, and sounds a little like the caricatured portrayals of southern hicks you see in the media. As someone with a bit of a drawl myself (I grew up about 80 miles from Texarkana, so the accent is actually similar), I am used to seeing the stunned look on people's faces when they realize that the bumpkin is conversant with concepts like quantum foam, moving operations to the cloud, the differences between Keynsian economics and the Austrian school, how the Mediterranean Sea was a dry basin until about 10,000 years ago, or some other unexpected bit of learning and competence they find totally incompatible with a Texas accent. And I just think the big, national media types, who are focused on the east and west coasts of the country, hear Jerry talk and just write him off as a fool.

Jerry Jones is a billionaire. A largely self-made billionaire (his dad did run his own insurance company) who has been very successful in two separate fields, and is arguably the most successful sports entrepreneur in the United States. Possibly, even, the entire world. He has resurrected a moribund football franchise, had it win multiple championships, create a staggering cash flow, and leveraged that into one of the greatest multi-use sports venues in existence. He has made huge mistakes, worked on some false assumptions, and blown decisions, but he is not stupid. If someone thinks smart people never make mistakes, then I advise them to spend a couple of days reading a little history.

In addition to some bad, bad moves, Jerry has also accomplished remarkable things. More importantly, I think he has changed his approach and style repeatedly as he tries to find a way to recapture that wild success he had at the beginning of his ownership of the Cowboys. I see each of his head coaches as a separate stage in the evolution of Jerry Jones.

Jimmy Johnson - Jerry and Jimmy came into the NFL as brash upstarts. Dallas, which in the seventies was one of the premier teams in the league, had fallen on hard times. Tom Landry, once one of the great innovators of the league, was seen as out of touch with the players of the day, but was still a widely respected figure in Dallas and the league. Showing him the door made Jerry wildly unpopular, and some never forgave him. But winning championships brought many back to the fold and added a legion of new fans. In turning the team around so fast and achieving so much success, Jones and Johnson were a team, doing things their way. But two things broke the pair up. The first was of course the clash of egos. While there should have been enough credit to go around, both of them tended to claim all of it. And the truth is that Jimmy was the football genius, while Jerry was the financial brains of the pair. Jerry wanted to be seen as more of a football guy than he really was, even though he was more of a football guy than the vast majority of the other owners in the league. (That is why I think he was such friends with Al Davis, because Davis was another owner who was also a football guy.)

The other thing was that Jimmy was very much a short-term guy. He has a style of leadership that is pretty great for short-term motivation and results, but that does not necessarily hold up for the long run. And he plans accordingly. He wanted to ride things to the top, and get out while the getting was good. Jerry, of course, is just the opposite. The Dallas Cowboys are literally his life. The shame is that the two JJs were a damn good team when they pulled together and would have won at least one and quite possibly more additional championships, and it was not an easy breakup. Justified or not, I think Jerry felt betrayed. I don't believe he had realized that Jimmy had a short tenure planned.

Barry Switzer - Switzer was an attempt by Jerry to duplicate the success with Jimmy: Successful college coach, with a history of successfully dealing with the moral ambiguities of a big-time program and players whose maturity level lagged their physical and athletic development.

Superficially, Switzer and Johnson were very similar. Both had won championships, both were brash and a little bigger than life, and both played football at the University of Arkansas. Switzer, however, did not have the ability to ride herd on a pro football team that Johnson did, and showed very little of the ability to evaluate talent or call the game that Jimmy had. But Jerry saw a coach that he could control, perhaps even dominate, and after the way it went with Jimmy, he wanted it that way. He would be the man in charge of personnel, and make sure everyone knew it.

Jerry believed that any coach could win with the talent the Cowboys had. And he was very likely right. But there were a couple of mistakes there, too. First, no matter how good your talent is now in the NFL, you have to restock. I think Jerry thought he was able to handle that part of the business, and his signing of Deion Sanders was his big, splashy move, an approach that Jerry would have to learn the hard way was high risk, and not always high reward. It did work out in the short-term, however, bringing a third Super Bowl to Jerry, but it was not sustainable.

The second one was that Jimmy had built the team, and had their respect. The evidence is that Barry never gained that respect, especially from the real leadership of the team, the triplets. This was compounded by some very questionable coaching decisions, like the one to go for it twice on fourth down against the Eagles when the Cowboys were on their own 29 - that decision wound up costing them the game and control of their division in 1995.

After a few years, the team fell from their lofty perch and Jerry decided it was not working out and cut the ties.

Chan Gailey Jerry decided the colorful, somewhat wild college coach was no longer the way to go, and went a more traditional route, hiring Pittsburgh Steelers Offensive Coordinator Chan Gailey. A low-key individual, he offered the team competence as a coach without threatening to overshadow the owner.

There was a potential for a longer-term relationship here, with Gailey taking the Cowboys to the playoffs in each of his two years at the helm. But he failed to win a playoff game, and here Jerry allowed his impatience to overrule his judgement. Gailey also did not defer to Troy Aikman, and Aikman was the unquestioned leader of the team. Jones dumped Gailey.

At the time, it was a probably a bad move, but it did wind up teaching Jerry a lesson. Since he promoted Jason Garrett, he has expressed his regret over pulling the trigger too soon on Gailey. This is something that influences his thinking more than many outside the Dallas fan base probably realize.

Dave Campo The next hire is probably where the enduring belief that Jerry Jones prefers a figurehead coach comes from. Dave Campo was a promotion from within, something that may resonate when people consider the ascension of Garrett to head coach. Campo was defensive coordinator for the Cowboys last Super Bowl to date. His selection also is a reflection of the loyalty Jerry feels for those he considers his people.

He was also not a very forceful person, even more poorly suited to deal with the strong personalities on the team. It was certainly not an unexpected development, but not one that Jerry seemed to realize would come from choosing a coach he could overshadow. Then he ran into bad luck, losing Jerry's most recent big acquisition, Joey Galloway, to injury. The injury bug also took Aikman out for several games. It would lead to his retirement, and start the long search for another winning quarterback that would not end until Tony Romo emerged to claim the job.

Campo had three consecutive 5-11 seasons, and his dismissal became inevitable. At the same time, talent acquisition was spotty, and the Cowboys became a shadow of the powerhouse Jimmy Johnson had been so instrumental in creating. It was time for a change, and this time, Jerry would do something radical.

In part 2, I look at the hiring of Bill Parcells, Wade Phillips, and the promotion of Jason Garrett, and where all this has brought Jerry Jones to in 2012.

 

[Jon88]

Interesting. I'm ready for Part 2.

 

[Hoofbite]

Jerry really has evolved and continues to do so.

Each year more and more plastic is added to his skeleton. Obviously a poor decision on his part. Adamantium would have been a much better choice had he not been penny pinching for that stadium all those years.

 

[Iamtdg]

The Evolution Of Jerry Jones Part 2
by Tom Ryle

Jerry Jones is many things as owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, some good, some infuriating, but above all, he is a man who wants to win. During his ownership, he has used widely varying approaches to do that. He started with wild success, winning three Super Bowls in the first six years, but since then the team has gone through a long and frustrating drought regarding playoff success.

I looked at the first four coaches under Jerry in Part 1 of this article. Now, here is a look at the most recent hires and how I think Jerry Jones has changed and evolved. Most importantly, it is a summary of how I feel he is running his team now, and the relationship he has with his coaches and a very important member of his family, son Stephen.

This, of course, is one man's opinion. It reflects what I think I can see of how Jerry has tried to handle things, and was inspired by the recent media talk about current head coach Jason Garrett being on the hot seat this year. I found that such speculation contradicted what I believe is really going on inside Valley Ranch. I wanted to do this entire analysis to share with the readers at BTB, who by and large are one of the best informed fan communities anywhere. I am mostly interested in seeing if you see logic and reason in what I say, or if you take issue with my conclusions.

Bill Parcells After the failure of Dave Campo, Jerry's first attempt to promote a head coach from within the Dallas organization, Jerry hired his first experienced NFL head coach. Bill Parcells had won two Lombardi Trophies with the New York Giants, Dallas' fierce rival in the NFC East, and was pretty clearly anything but a yes man. He was about as complete a change of direction from his predecessor as possible and it seems obvious that Jerry was willing to give him more control over some things than Campo had.

He was also not a coach who could be viewed as staying for the long term. He already had a history of leaving coaching jobs after a relatively short stay and had retired twice, stating after his stint as head coach of the New York Jets that he would never coach again. He also had complained after leaving the New England Patriots that he had not been given enough input on player acquisition, or, as he put it, "They want you to cook the dinner; at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries. Okay?" This would lead one to believe that he was given some assurances that he would be in control, or at least have a strong input into, draft decisions. He also signed many free agents that he had coached in other places, such as Drew Bledsoe, Terry Glenn, Vinny Testaverde, and Aaron Glenn.

However, Jerry Jones still appears to have continued to wheel and deal on his own. He acquired several high priced veterans during Parcell's tenure, including wide receiver Terrell Owens. Parcells never would refer to Owens by name, calling him "the Player", which could be construed as an indication of his disapproval of the move. In the 2005 draft, he was apparently overruled when the team picked DeMarcus Ware instead of Parcells' choice, Marcus Spears, with their first pick (although he was not able to complain much since Spears was still available and chosen later by Dallas).

Parcells definitely improved the team's performance in the regular season, posting three winning seasons out of his four and getting into the playoffs twice, but the team was unable to capitalize, losing both of the playoff games. He did make one significant contribution of lasting impact by making Tony Romo the starting quarterback in his final year. But after that year, the 2006 season, he retired for the third time. It is rumored that he wanted more money, and Jerry Jones did not feel his performance justified it. If true, Jerry probably made an intelligent decision in letting him leave.

Wade Phillips Perhaps influenced by the improvement in the Cowboys' win-loss record, Jerry went with another experienced NFL head coach, Wade Phillips, in 2007. Phillips was certainly a less abrasive personality than Parcells, and his choice may have reflected the strains of dealing with a difficult and egotistic head coach. But there were also some red flags in Phillips' past that perhaps should have been given more weight. His first head coaching job with the Denver Broncos ended after he was perceived to have lost control of the team. And his last game with the Buffalo Bills was a playoff loss that was widely blamed on his decision in 1999 to replace Doug Flutie, who had led the team to the postseason, with Rob Johnson, under whom the team lost the game. It cast a shadow over the rest of his tenure and he was fired after the next year.

He was chosen by Jerry after he had interviewed ten candidates. One of the other prospective head coaches was Jason Garrett, and Jerry Jones hired him to be the offensive coordinator under Phillips. The belief is that Garrett was seen as not having enough experience to become a head coach at the time, and was brought on board by Jerry as a future option should Phillips not work out. Whether that is true or not, the perception could not have been a comfortable thing for Phillips to deal with.

He did get off to a very good start, helped by Garrett's offense, which was ranked as the second best in the NFL. He went 13-3 in his first year, but playoff success continued to elude the team as they lost to the New York Giants, eventual Super Bowl winners. The disappointing end to the season led to one of Phillips' most famous ill-advised statements, when he claimed that the bye week the team earned that year was the equivalent of a playoff win. He returned to the playoffs in 2009, and had the first postseason win since the last Dallas Super Bowl. But the success was short-lived as the Minnesota Vikings dismantled Dallas the following week.

2010 was highly anticipated. A familiar narrative surrounded Dallas as it was considered to be very talented, and Jerry Jones openly talked about Dallas being the first team to play in a Super Bowl in its home stadium that year. But the season opened with a couple of tough losses, and by the time the team staggered to mid-season with a dismal 1-7 record, it was widely believed Phillips had lost the team. Jerry made the difficult decision to fire Phillips at that point, the first time a Dallas coach was terminated during the season. But given all the missteps and the "cupcake" environment that the team had, Jerry had no choice. And he took lessons from all that in his next move.

Jason Garrett Jerry now went back to another strategy he was familiar with, promoting Jason Garrett from the staff to be the interim head coach. Garrett had interviewed for other head coaching jobs in the previous two years, so Jerry may have seen this as a use-or-lose scenario. Finishing out the season 5-3, he gave every indication that he was able to get the team behind him. From the very beginning he set out to change the culture of the team, and his performance is seen as earning him the full time head coaching job for 2011.

He also brings a skill set that should appeal to Jerry. He is not at all outwardly egotistical, and does not seem in any way bothered or threatened by Jerry's need to be in the spotlight. And given the way Jerry often uses the same phrases and concepts that Garrett espouses, it seems at times that Jerry is as much a spokesman for Garrett as for himself. There is no drama with Garrett's activities, and all his moves seem well considered and logical. Any disagreements or issues are worked out behind the scenes, and the top management generally presents a unified front to the world. He also is bringing in assistant coaches that, to all appearances, mesh exceedingly well with his philosophy and objectives. And as disappointing as the 8-8 season in Garrett's first full year is to some, it is movement in the right direction. The restoration of a full offseason after the disruption of the lockout in 2011 gives a valid basis for the belief that this season will see the improvement continue.

And by this time, there were other changes going on in the way Jerry Jones was conducting himself. With the opening of Cowboys Stadium, the most spectacular sports venue in existence, he now had a secondary focus as it became the scene for college bowl games, high school playoffs, an NBA all-star game, and high-profile boxing matches. Although its image was marred by the weather plagued and poorly managed Super Bowl XLV, it is still a prime setting for major events, and an important part of Jerry Jones' business and income stream.

Also, a new power has emerged in the Dallas Cowboys front office. Jerry Jones' son Stephen is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for the Cowboys, but in many aspects, he functions, at least at times, as the de facto general manager. The clearest example of this is the trade up to draft college blue chip cornerback Morris Claiborne. Stephen set up a contingency trade with the St Louis Rams just to be ready if Claiborne should fall to the number six pick held by the Rams, although it was not expected that this would happen. Then, when to the team's surprise he was still available, Stephen stood firm and made the Rams honor the original deal of Dallas' first and second round picks when the Rams tried to pry an additional pick out of the Cowboys. This showed not only how much power he holds with the team, but also that he may be less likely to make impulsive decisions than his father. We will never know, but I suspect that Jerry might have caved and thrown in another pick for this very shiny new toy.

As the 2012 season draws closer (albeit with agonizing slowness), what kind of owner is Jerry now?

He still is a loyal one when the people are "his". I feel this was a big factor in Garrett's hire. Jerry has known him for years and I believe he has a great trust in Garrett. I think he is less impulsive than he once was, or at least he has learned to listen to his two key partners, Garrett and Stephen Jones, when they tell him to tap the brakes. Moreover, I think Garrett has more latitude in player choice and all the other aspects of running the team than any coach since Jimmy Johnson, certainly more than anyone since Bill Parcells. And all indications are that Stephen Jones is Garrett's firm ally.

That is a very important thing. Jerry Jones talked, famously, about the "window closing", which is mostly perceived to refer to the aging of core players Tony Romo, Jason Witten, DeMarcus Ware, and Jay Ratliff. But it also may be as much a reference to Jerry's own time as the active owner and general manager. He turns 70 this year, and it does seem clear that he has already begun the transition of power to the heir apparent, Stephen Jones. While he may still make some unexpected deals, I think it is becoming less likely as age inevitably slows him down. He now has two other people that he trusts to help him run the team in Stephen and Jason Garrett, and this is something he has never had before. And he has his history of coaching hires, with all the good and bad aspects. He shows every evidence of learning from them. I flatly believe these things make him the best owner he has ever been. He still is a very intelligent, savvy man and a true force in the NFL, no matter how badly John Mara may want to hinder him. If making better decisions at the top leads to success on the field, the Dallas Cowboys should see some very good years in the immediate future.

 

[Jon88]

And there it is!

That fucking rocks, man! You rock, man!