In 1997, Bill Parcells stood before reporters in New England and delivered one of the most quoted lines in coaching history: if they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries. He walked away from the Patriots after a Super Bowl run because the owner and the coach could not agree on who ran the kitchen. Nearly three years earlier, Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson had already shown how this story ends for the Dallas Cowboys.
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During a recent sit-down on the Double Coverage Podcast, former ESPN host Skip Bayless revealed the message Jones left Jimmy Johnson with before the firing.
“At some point, Jerry wants all the credit. He wants to be the man, and after two straight Super Bowls, 92-93 seasons, they’re clashing, and Jimmy shamed him a lot in front of people behind the scenes, in front of other coaches, and they had a big clash at the league meeting, and Jerry’s like, ‘Screw you, man. You don’t understand. It’s my team, not your team.'”
“And he goes back to the hotel that night at the league meeting, and he sees two Dallas Morning News reporters sitting at the bar, and he walks over, and he says, ‘I’m going to fire Jimmy Johnson…’ And furthermore, I’m going to hire Barry Switzer, who’d been out of football for three years. I’m going to hire Barry Switzer to coach the Dallas Cowboys.'”
Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones became part of the Dallas Cowboys in the same year. When Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989 and hired Johnson as the head coach, Johnson’s contract granted him full authority over player personnel, trades, and coaching hires.
During their five-year partnership (1989–1993), Jones and Johnson won two Super Bowls (Super Bowl XXVII and Super Bowl XXVIII). However, once the team started winning, Jones allegedly wanted a much larger say in football decisions and began holding his own press conferences. To that end, it became a battle of credit between the two.
By their fifth season together, the tension escalated when Jimmy Johnson publicly expressed interest in the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars job and joked on television about Jones pocketing Super Bowl party funds.
However, not much later, Jerry Jones expressed what he felt about the former Cowboys head coach following months of bad blood. While Jones never formally fired Johnson, their mutual separation on March 29, 1994, felt much like a dismissal.
After Johnson’s departure, Jones moved as per his wish and hired Barry Switzer on March 30, 1994. Switzer inherited the dominant roster Johnson built and led the Dallas Cowboys to a victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX during the 1995 season.
However, unlike Johnson, Switzer had no interest in front-office power struggles and willingly let Jones take full control over player personnel, drafts, and trades.