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Jerry Jones explains his philosophy on cutting the Cowboys roster to 53 players
10:59 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 7, 2010
SportsDayDFW.com
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was interviewed on Tuesday and discussed cutting down the roster to 53-players and the importance of preseason games to him personally. Here are some highlights:
Who was the toughest player for the Cowboys to cut and is there a possibility of any of those players returning in the future?
Well, I think anytime you get down to those last three spots, they should be for the future. You should be developing for the future there and of course, you got to figure, you got to say, “Who are those last three spots?” But still, on a 53-man roster, certainly, that should be prominent. So, usually, those are younger players and so you have to make some decisions sometime with age. I thought Junior Siavii was a player that had played well during our training camp, probably playing the best football, to his coach’s credit, that’s he’s played. But, we have Josh Price-Brent and I think when we looked at what we might be able to do with [Sean] Lissemore, those young defensive linemen, keeping those young guys coming and the development of those young guys was important to us. And it turns out the other two defensive linemen that we did release were picked up by the club so we knew we had good, young, on-the-come defensive linemen and I’m glad that we protected Lissemore, or he would have been picked up.
How tough of a process is it, personally, when you have to narrow the team down like that?
I know how much these players have put into getting here. They’ve spent there lives, literally, adult lives, trying to play and they usually had great, outstanding college careers that warranted being here. But the key thing that I tell them is that, certainly, they should have the opportunity to stay in the NFL and go to another team and ironically, I can’t tell you the percentage of time when they’ve been sitting right back here with the Cowboys, signing another contract. So, it’s not over, at all when a young player, especially, gets cut.
Do you have your eyes on any players that other teams may have released?
Not that have been released. We’ve evaluated that over the last two or three days and we’ve done what we can do to get our practice squad and the people on our practice squad that we want to work with and develop, but you constantly keep your eye on the waiver wire. You constantly are bringing groups of anywhere from two to five, six, seven in at any given time over a month period of time. You might do it a couple of times over a month that you’re evaluating. You work out, you take your scouts out, you take your coaches out, you look at them go through drills and see if you’d rather be working them usually then working with who you got on the practice squad. That’s a continuous process. The other thing you’re doing, of course, is getting your information bank filled so that if you do have an injury, you do have a need as the season goes along, you know where to go get a player.
Do you put any stock into the preseason games? Are they an indicator at all of how a team will do in the regular season?
Well, I think with the preseason, you do put stock in it, especially from the standpoint of evaluation and from the standpoint of repetition. Football is repetition and so we did get a lot of repetition; we stayed with the basics but we weren’t doing just basics on the practice field, we were doing a lot of the things that we’ll be doing against Washington and other teams. But, as far as five games are concerned, I’ve said this before, we’ve played five games in preseason before and had Super Bowl winning season. And we’ve played four games in preseason and not won Super Bowls, so I don’t think that has a bearing.
I have no, and I’m not being defensive about it although I’m answering your question, but I have no problem with the amount of travel because you travel anyways, when you’re moving from team to team in your preseason. So if teams travel across country, Washington traveled all the way to Arizona to play a preseason game and then back to Washington. So, people travel during preseason; that’s not an issue and plus the team needs to get used to traveling anyways. Five weeks…when you look at the fact that we basically…our starters or certainly the top one and a half players at each position had a week off, for all practical purposes, when we went to Canton. We quit practicing them, for the most part, we’re saving their legs when we left San Antonio and then we didn’t really get them back out there until we got to California, so that was a week off, right in the middle of training camp or four or five days, of two-a-days, which is the equivalent of a week off.
To listen to the interview, click here.
• • •
10:59 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 7, 2010
SportsDayDFW.com
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was interviewed on Tuesday and discussed cutting down the roster to 53-players and the importance of preseason games to him personally. Here are some highlights:
Who was the toughest player for the Cowboys to cut and is there a possibility of any of those players returning in the future?
Well, I think anytime you get down to those last three spots, they should be for the future. You should be developing for the future there and of course, you got to figure, you got to say, “Who are those last three spots?” But still, on a 53-man roster, certainly, that should be prominent. So, usually, those are younger players and so you have to make some decisions sometime with age. I thought Junior Siavii was a player that had played well during our training camp, probably playing the best football, to his coach’s credit, that’s he’s played. But, we have Josh Price-Brent and I think when we looked at what we might be able to do with [Sean] Lissemore, those young defensive linemen, keeping those young guys coming and the development of those young guys was important to us. And it turns out the other two defensive linemen that we did release were picked up by the club so we knew we had good, young, on-the-come defensive linemen and I’m glad that we protected Lissemore, or he would have been picked up.
How tough of a process is it, personally, when you have to narrow the team down like that?
I know how much these players have put into getting here. They’ve spent there lives, literally, adult lives, trying to play and they usually had great, outstanding college careers that warranted being here. But the key thing that I tell them is that, certainly, they should have the opportunity to stay in the NFL and go to another team and ironically, I can’t tell you the percentage of time when they’ve been sitting right back here with the Cowboys, signing another contract. So, it’s not over, at all when a young player, especially, gets cut.
Do you have your eyes on any players that other teams may have released?
Not that have been released. We’ve evaluated that over the last two or three days and we’ve done what we can do to get our practice squad and the people on our practice squad that we want to work with and develop, but you constantly keep your eye on the waiver wire. You constantly are bringing groups of anywhere from two to five, six, seven in at any given time over a month period of time. You might do it a couple of times over a month that you’re evaluating. You work out, you take your scouts out, you take your coaches out, you look at them go through drills and see if you’d rather be working them usually then working with who you got on the practice squad. That’s a continuous process. The other thing you’re doing, of course, is getting your information bank filled so that if you do have an injury, you do have a need as the season goes along, you know where to go get a player.
Do you put any stock into the preseason games? Are they an indicator at all of how a team will do in the regular season?
Well, I think with the preseason, you do put stock in it, especially from the standpoint of evaluation and from the standpoint of repetition. Football is repetition and so we did get a lot of repetition; we stayed with the basics but we weren’t doing just basics on the practice field, we were doing a lot of the things that we’ll be doing against Washington and other teams. But, as far as five games are concerned, I’ve said this before, we’ve played five games in preseason before and had Super Bowl winning season. And we’ve played four games in preseason and not won Super Bowls, so I don’t think that has a bearing.
I have no, and I’m not being defensive about it although I’m answering your question, but I have no problem with the amount of travel because you travel anyways, when you’re moving from team to team in your preseason. So if teams travel across country, Washington traveled all the way to Arizona to play a preseason game and then back to Washington. So, people travel during preseason; that’s not an issue and plus the team needs to get used to traveling anyways. Five weeks…when you look at the fact that we basically…our starters or certainly the top one and a half players at each position had a week off, for all practical purposes, when we went to Canton. We quit practicing them, for the most part, we’re saving their legs when we left San Antonio and then we didn’t really get them back out there until we got to California, so that was a week off, right in the middle of training camp or four or five days, of two-a-days, which is the equivalent of a week off.
To listen to the interview, click here.
• • •