During Saturday’s loss to the Eagles, Cowboys owner Jerry Jone went down to the sideline to talk to head coach Jason Garrett, to make sure Garrett knew the Giants had won earlier in the day and therefore the Cowboys didn’t have anything to play for.
Some fans and media members have suggested that Jones was out of line by doing that, but Jones says he can’t understand why anyone would think the owner of a business shouldn’t be involved in every element of that business.
“It has amazed me to be criticized for really walking down on the floor of the company,” Jones said on KTCK-AM 1310, via the Dallas Morning News. “The more involved your top management, the more involved ownership can be, I’ve always thought made the best way for it to work.”
Jones says he doesn’t act any differently on game days now than he did in the 1990s, and that it worked out pretty well then.
“You didn’t see that kind of criticism very early on, but we were winning Super Bowls,” Jones said. “And it was the same exact way that we handled our decision-making and the exact same way that we handled our ultimate information gathering system. We’ve been doing it ever since I owned the team. The exact same way.”
Jones says he doesn’t tell Garrett who can play and who can’t, but he did want to make sure Garrett understood that quarterback Tony Romo didn’t need to take any chances by playing in an essentially meaningless game against the Eagles.
“That’s Jason’s decision, but he doesn’t need to be making that one by himself,” Jones said. “So I wanted to, very briefly, step down there with just a few minutes gone in the first quarter, sit there and say, ‘Here’s the lay of the land. Romo’s got a hand injury, but it looks like we’re going to have him for New York.’”
And if Jones thinks his coach might not know the lay of the land, Jones is going to make sure his coach knows the lay of the land. That’s going to be the case as long as Jones owns the Cowboys.