I might have given Jerry Jones too much credit.
That statement applies in various ways to his team’s handling of contracts for key players this offseason. As we observed during PFT Live after the Cowboys made no early-offseason progress with quarterback Dak Prescott, receiver CeeDee Lamb, and linebacker Micah Parsons, when it comes to paying great young players, Jones and company are: (1) cheap; (2) short-sighted; and (3) not as smart as they think they are.
Now, with camp open and none of those players getting new deals yet, there’s another basis for admitting that I regarded Jones as playing chess when he’s actually playing checkers with Thurman Merman.
On Saturday, a snippet from a Jones press conference posted on Twitter by one of his employees created the impression that the league plans to try to siphon revenue from the salary cap now, in order to help pay for the eventual $14.1 billion Sunday Ticket judgment, if the NFL fails to reverse the outcome on appeal. Then, I took a look at the account of Jones’s comments from Clarence E. Hill, Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
It creates a much different impression.
The broader, more comprehensive coverage of Jones’s explanation suggests that he’s simply grasping for reasons to keep dragging his feet when it comes to paying Dak, CeeDee, and Micah. And Jones is seizing on the Sunday Ticket verdict as a way to explain that he needs to be careful in paying them because he has to prepare for the possibility that the cap won’t grow the way it has.
“You need to have a feel of where the revenue is going to be down the road,” Jones said. “I feel like I know better than anybody living or got a feel for what the revenue is going to be four, five, six years from now, than anybody living. I’ve spent all this time doing that. And if you don’t understand what the revenue is going to do, then you can’t look and see what the cap is going to be. And so it is an art, almost, about how to look ahead. . . . We have presumed that that revenue goes up, and that’s one of the things just given in these contracts, the revenue goes up. Well, it went down in COVID. Am I optimistic? The most I’ve ever been. But we’ve got one thing staring us in the face that could dramatically reduce revenue.”
He made it clear that he’s talking about the Sunday Ticket verdict, without mentioning it specifically.
“Well, I’m just saying things like, we had a little deal down here in Los Angeles,” Jones said. “I was the only witness for the league.” (He wasn’t. Not even close.)
The league told PFT in the aftermath of the verdict that it won’t affect the salary cap. Changes the NFL might make to the out-of-market TV package could; if Sunday Ticket is disbanded as the antitrust violation that it is, $2 billion per year would evaporate. (They would surely replace it with something that might eventually be as lucrative. If not more lucrative.)
For now, no one knows what will happen. But Jones is willing to wrap his arms and legs around the potential negative impact on future revenues to lowball his star players now.
“That’s exactly what I’m really trying to tell everybody is, frankly, I’ve got a better feel than other people because I have a sense of what revenues might be for the whole league,” Jones said. “And so that if you see me optimistic, then you must know that I think it’s pretty good. If you see me a little cautious, you must know that I’m being cautious. I’m the best at looking around corners. As far as body language and instincts, I’m better than anybody.”
Frankly, Jerry, if you were that good at looking around corners, you would have seen the Sunday Ticket verdict coming. And you would have either found a way to win the case for the league on the witness stand — or you would have told the Commissioner that the case needed to be settled, a long time ago.