FRISCO, Texas (AP) — Jerry Jones hasn’t even sniffed an NFL championship in the past 30 of his 37 years as owner, president and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys.
Yet the 83-year-old still has the goal of retiring as the owner with the most Super Bowl titles, despite New England’s Robert Kraft having twice as many as Jones’ three.
“Got work to do,” son Stephen Jones, the executive vice president of personnel, said at the club’s season-ending news conference Wednesday.
“I’ve got work to do,” Jerry Jones repeated. “But at least I’m up to the second rung of the ladder. My goal is to have retired and won a Super Bowl as an old man.”
First things first, though.
Dallas is the only team that hasn’t reached an NFC championship game since 1996. The Cowboys have missed the playoffs the past two seasons — Mike McCarthy’s last as Dallas head coach and Brian Schottenheimer’s first.
The defense is pretty much a mess, soon to have its fourth defensive coordinator in four seasons after Matt Eberflus became the third since 2020 to last just one year.
The offense is among the NFL’s best, with Dallas (7-9-1) missing the playoffs in a full season from quarterback Dak Prescott for the first time since 2019. It was one of Prescott’s best seasons, too — third in yards passing and fourth in touchdowns.
The Cowboys like to believe they have some foundational pieces on defense, and standout defensive tackle Quinnen Williams surely counts as one. Any others are debatable at best.
Prescott is going into his 11th season, and the Cowboys have two first-round draft picks in April after the trade that sent star pass rusher Micah Parsons to Green Bay a week before the season started.
As far as the Dallas defense is concerned, this draft will be among the most important in the tenure of Jerry Jones, particularly if the Pro Football Hall of Famer really does want to believe he can catch Kraft.
“I don’t have that many drafts left,” Jones said as reporters around him chuckled. “The bottom line is that, yes, this is very important. We want to while Dak is playing the game and got it down the way he’s got it, we want to get out here and basically do better than what we did this year. So the combination of those things give us the incentive to, dare I say it, bust the budget to try to get something done now, yes. We’ll do some dramatic things.”
The Cowboys haven’t done anything dramatic in free agency in years, and the top priority this offseason will be keeping receiver George Pickens. Whether it’s a franchise tag or a long-term deal, Pickens will cost in the neighborhood of $30 million per season. Dallas also wants to keep running back Javonte Williams, who will be an unrestricted free agent.
Defensive tackle Kenny Clark came in the Parsons trade, and provided the consistency and accountability that Schottenheimer often preaches. The reality is, Clark has a $20 million salary cap hit on a contract with no more guaranteed money, so a reworked deal makes the most sense.
Assuming Clark returns — and Cowboys sound as if they want him back considering he was part of the Parsons trade — that will be a huge investment at defensive tackle with Williams and Osa Odighizuwa included. Dallas will need to hit on the first-rounders if the choices end up being defensive players.
“I’m not saying for sure we’re gonna pick defense,” Stephen Jones said. “But we’ve got to see that vision for where you bring in two No. 1 picks and get them contributing right away.”
Winning three Super Bowls came quickly for Jerry Jones when Dallas became the first team to do that in a four-season span, and before his 54th birthday. Kraft’s six might be out of reach, so the focus for the time being is on four.
“I know whether it’s his gold jacket, all the things he’s accomplished from the value of this franchise, I think he’d give a lot of that up for one more Super Bowl,” Stephen Jones said of his dad. “Everybody in this organization wants to get the job done. Certainly what we want to do is get one more for sure.”
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