Cowboys camp updates: Why was Jerry Jones emotional, dropping F-bombs? Dak Prescott is full participant
By
Jon Machota 1h ago
OXNARD, Calif. — Jerry Jones is always optimistic this time of year. So it should come as no surprise that the
Cowboys owner and general manager said Wednesday that he would do anything to win another Super Bowl, even if that meant giving up a large portion of the $9 billion he’s estimated to be worth.
But what was more interesting about Jones’ answer was how he got emotional, pausing as he started to choke up.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me, ‘You’re naive.’ Well, it’s a beautiful world,” Jones said. “It’s a better world to be naive than to be skeptical and be negative all the time. I do my best work, I think, when it’s more positive. I need it to be promising. I need us to have a way to go that causes me to do stupid things, or it causes me to do excessive things that sometimes really work. That’s been the way I’ve played the cards.”
That wasn’t the only time Jones got teary-eyed while answering a question during an hour-long news conference to mark the start of training camp.
The 78-year-old who has often said, “I don’t have time to have a bad time,” spoke at length about how appreciative he is to be back in southern California after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Cowboys to hold last year’s training camp at the team’s headquarters in Frisco, Texas. The Jones that reporters saw on Wednesday seemed to be enjoying every minute, knowing that he only has so many of these moments left in his life.
“Doggone, just as much as I enjoy this stuff,” Jones said, “I get to thinking ‘Well, are you ever going to see that again? Are you ever going to be sitting up there talking to everybody again at the same time?’ I’m not going to apologize, but I am sensitive today and emotional about the whole show.”
Jones’ emotions also got the best of him while discussing former Cowboys head coach Jimmy Johnson, who will be joining Jones in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in less than three weeks.
Jones was more candid than usual when talking about the two parting ways back in March of 1994, fresh off winning their second Super Bowl together. Jones shared the story of Barry Switzer, who was hired to replace Johnson, telling Jones that he wanted to get Johnson and Jones together one more time.
As Jones remembers it, Switzer said, “I just want to get both you little assholes on this couch and ask you both how could you fuck this up.”
Can Jones answer Switzer’s question now?
“I’ve never been able to know why I fucked it up,” Jones responded. “Not just that, but anything else. No, I can’t answer those questions.”
Considering Jones’ range of emotions, tearing up one minute and then laughing and dropping F-bombs the next, it seemed like the perfect time to ask if Johnson would finally be going into the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor. But Jones didn’t want to go that far.
“Let’s don’t knock all the fun off,” Jones said, “let’s keep having fun here.”
Here are some of the other highlights from the news conference that included Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones and head coach Mike McCarthy.
Vaccination update
The Cowboys are not one of the reportedly 13
NFL teams to have met the 85 percent threshold rate for players being completely vaccinated for COVID-19. Teams that reach the 85 percent mark will have far less restrictions inside their practice facilities and on the road for games. Stephen Jones said the Cowboys believe they will “hit that threshold and more” by the start of the season.
“My opinion is it absolutely will not limit us in any way, the issue of vaccination,” Jerry Jones said. “It will not limit us in any way as to being competitive as early as when we play Pittsburgh in the first preseason game.”
Jones said of the team’s current 90-man roster, only a “handful” are committed to not getting the vaccine at some point.
McCarthy said he shared with the team how he wasn’t completely on board when the vaccination was first made available.
“But through the relationships that we’re fortunate to have in the medical community, you watch, you listen,” he said. “I think that same approach was given to our players. We just wanted to make sure they had all the facts. I think it’s important to state that the relationships we have in the medical community and to be able to watch the science, the numbers and so forth, I made a conscious decision to get the vaccination.”
No updates given on injured players
During the news conference, players were on the field going through their conditioning tests. Updates on players like WR
Amari Cooper (ankle), DT
Trysten Hill (knee) and TE
Blake Jarwin (knee) will be given Thursday when the team takes the field for their first camp practice.
Latest on Dak Prescott
McCarthy said Prescott will be a full participant beginning Thursday. Prescott did just about everything during organized team activities and minicamp, but during the 11-on-11 portion, there were no defensive linemen on the field. That was done as a precautionary measure so no player accidentally ran into Prescott’s surgically repaired right ankle. The defensive linemen will be on the field when Prescott takes part in those drills at camp.
“He’s been in the facility every single day since the injury,” McCarthy said of Prescott. “From a performance standpoint, I think we’re stating the obvious, he’s an outstanding quarterback that has great days in front of him. But his leadership, and all that, to me that’s part of the contract. When players receive big contracts, I view it, this is my opinion, that obviously they’re being rewarded and recognized for what they do on Sundays. But the responsibility that they have Monday through Saturday greatly increases. And nobody emulates that more than Dak Prescott.
“It was great to get him back. I can’t say enough about our offseason program. We definitely hit all the targets that we wanted to and even for some of the challenges that we didn’t foresee coming that were upon us in the first three or four weeks, our players did a phenomenal job.”
Hard Knocks
McCarthy was a little surprised to find out the Cowboys would be featured on the five-part docuseries that will air on HBO.
“I am just going to be honest,” McCarthy said, “I about wrecked my truck when Jerry called me. I was driving through a rain storm. But I got it back on the road, and I am all on.”
Is McCarthy concerned about how he might be perceived with the cameras filming so much of what he and the Cowboys will be doing behind the scenes?
“I think it’s important for us for all of us, and that was the message after meeting with the ‘Hard Knocks’ staff, is just be yourself,” McCarthy said. “Let them do their job and we are going to do ours. That’s really my focus. I’ve never put a lot of time and effort into really caring about what people think of me. That’s why I was probably the only guy who walked in here without sunglasses. We are just going to be ourselves.
“Our focus is really on establishing a winning culture. This is our first opportunity as a football team to have a true training camp. … We are all just excited to get on the field and get going and start building what we all know we can accomplish. At the end of the day, it’s about winning a world championship. Nothing else really matters.”
How do they get back to winning Super Bowls?
While answering that question, Jerry Jones specifically mentioned two players, Charles Haley and Deion Sanders. Haley helped put the Cowboys over the top when he was traded to Dallas in 1992. Sanders was a key piece on the 1995 Super Bowl team after signing with Dallas at the beginning of that season. It’s pretty clear that the current team is lacking defensive playmakers, let alone ones who could be compared to Hall of Famers like Haley and Sanders.
“I think we’ve got a combination right now,” Jerry Jones added, “seriously, and I’m not making comparisons because you can get in so much trouble doing that, but I think we’ve got a combination of youth, players, talent as well as we’ve got some solid, solid talented veteran players. When you look at our top 10-11 paid guys, they are guys that can make major contributions to this team. We had a core base like that in those championship years that made that core base, yet, boy, we had some talented young guys come through.
“We’re starting to look like that when you look at team make up. Now, I’m not comparing Troy (Aikman) and Dak, I’m not comparing Emmitt (Smith) and (
Ezekiel Elliott). I’m not doing that at all. And certainly I’m not comparing Michael (Irvin) with anybody we’ve got at all. Michael’s a special thing. Do we dare think we could have one of those on this team? That would have that kind of leadership role? We may have it. It might be your quarterback.”
for those Jerry tears. He gave that exact -- I mean exact -- same speech about, "I could be anywhere in the world right now but I want to be here with this team" in the 2008 Hard Knocks. 
