Jerry Jones’ stubborn control over Dallas Cowboys football decisions is making things worse for the team. Week 1 handed them a tough 28-20 loss because of poor defense, after which Terrell Owens raised questions about his approach.
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“It’s the same old same old,” he said on Get To The Point. “I mean, Jerry Jones is really selling all these Cowboy fans, he’s selling them a fantasy, he’s selling them a dream. … He needs to relinquish some of the control that he has with the team and allow some other people to kind of step in place. That’s kind of like a sign of narcissism, in a sense. And at the end of the day, he’s not even really worried about wins and losses.”
The criticism comes after a major defensive failure against the Giants. This was the much-hyped new-look Dallas defense under new coordinator Christian Parker. This side of the ball was pretty much rebuilt after finishing dead last in the previous season, with additions like Caleb Downs, Malachi Lawrence, Jalen Thompson, Cobie Durant, Dee Winters, and Rashan Gary. And yet, this side of the ball disappointed like clockwork.
Dallas struggled to stop the New York Giants as they converted 9 of 11 third downs, their best third-down performance in a game since 1978. Dallas also ranked 21st in pressure rate in Week 1 even though it blitzed at the NFL’s seventh-highest rate. In fact, New York had the possession twice during the fourth quarter; things were that bad.
It was the same old story: the Dallas offense worked overtime to try and remain competitive, but the defense upended their efforts.
Dallas posted a 39.7% defensive success rate, the worst among teams playing Sunday.
Jerry Jones also expressed his disappointment during his weekly interview on 105.3 The Fan.
“Communication,” Jones said. “The communication aspects of it. Just being out of position. Fundamentally between the two, communication…” He added, “I was taken back that the physicalness of it wasn’t more obvious. We had some guys play hard, and we had some guys do some good things on both sides of the ball, offense and defense.”
Jerry Jones has been running this team since 1989. He had great playmakers in the 1990s, like the Playmaker, Michael Irvin, himself. There was Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and the Doomsday Defense III. Charles Haley’s run with the Cowboys proved crucial in the team winning three Super Bowls. However, after those players left, the Cowboys were never as dominant.
Jones now has to deal with the annoying tag of being championship-less for the past 30 years. And in these years, the most recent time a Cowboys team played well on offense and defense was 2022. Jones’ control over the team remains the same.
We don’t have to look beyond how he handled the Micah Parsons situation, which eventually led him to trade the star pass-rusher to the Green Bay Packers. He was perhaps the one bright spot on the Cowboys’ defense in recent years. But Parsons pushed the limits to show his frustration: he lay down on the training table during a preseason game in 2025, and also wore his jersey inside out.
However, Jones soldiered on. He said early in the year Dallas was going to “bust its budget” trying to rebuild this team this season. And it looked like he did; all the additions should have made the defense competitive. But as of now, this defense looks far from the version Jones has been selling fans.
Per The Athletic, Jones will not retire anytime soon. He says he has “work to do” in trying to beat Robert Kraft and the Patriots’ record for the most Super Bowl wins. But Jones is 83, and needs four Lombardis to tie the record at the very least. Something has got to give.
“I don’t have a succession plan, I don’t,” Jones told The Athletic. “One day I just won’t be here to toss my two cents in.”
The upcoming games will show whether Jerry Jones actually has a plan for team success or whether it becomes another big mess for the Cowboys.