Cowboys owner Jerry Jones sat down with one of the organization’s biggest critics in an interview that was released on YouTube on Wednesday night.
Jones spoke with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith during an hour-long conversation as part of a special edition of the “Stephen A. Smith Show” that touched on everything from the CeeDee Lamb drama, negotiations with star quarterback Dak Prescott and the perception that Jones cares more about money than winning.
The Cowboys, who have not won a Super Bowl in nearly 30 years and haven’t reached a conference championship game in the same amount of time, were one of the big storylines this offseason as the Lamb negotiations took center stage.
Lamb eventually signed a four-year, $136 million contract on Aug. 26 and Jones told Smith that he wasn’t stressed over the star wide receiver missing training camp.
“There was never any question about how we felt CeeDee Lamb was as a football player or what he could do to help out this team,” Jones said. “I don’t see any rewards or penalties on your timer on ‘Does he get on the field or is he on the field when he better be out there.’ I had no urgency at all about getting him to the field.”
Lamb’s contract talks weren’t the only ones that football fans have been keeping an eye on.
Prescott is entering the final year of his contract which would make him a free agent after this season and the clock is ticking on getting an extension done before the start of the season.
Jones praised Prescott while speaking with Smith, saying that he believed the QB would only get better as the years went on.
“What he is as a person and as a quarterback will age well,” the Cowboys owner said. “I think it will age well as he moves into the next five or ten years of his life. I think he’s the kind of quarterback that gets better and better.”
The owner also provided some insight into what his thinking is in terms of the negotiations between the Cowboys and Prescott.
“We have the challenge of not only recouping what we have spent on him over the last four years, we’ve gotta add that to what we’re gonna be paying him for the future,” Jones said. “That’s not Dak’s problem on the end that it’s the Dallas Cowboys’ problem, because that money is not going to be there to spend on supporting cast. So we gotta ask ourselves, can we have the kind of success that Dak deserves, we deserve, his teammates deserve, our fans deserve? Can we do that and get in the range to afford Dak? I think we can.”
There will be plenty of pressure on the Cowboys to finally get over the hump after falling well short of expectations in the postseason over the last three years, including last season when they lost to the Packers in the wild card round.
That has led to many fans claiming that Jones’ priorities had more to do with making money than winning football games, an idea that Jones pushed back on.
“That’s bull,” he fired back. “Anybody that really knows me is that I’d trade two-thirds, a third of whatever percent you want to call about what the Cowboys are supposed to be worth to get one of those Super Bowls.”
The Cowboys open their season Sunday in Cleveland against the Browns.
