Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says he always has been and always will be the general manager in Dallas. The former Cowboys coach who won two Super Bowls in Dallas says Jones is full of it.
Jimmy Johnson, Jones’s former college teammate who was hired by Jones to coach the Cowboys shortly after Jones bought the franchise in 1989, said on the Dan Patrick Show that Jones may claim he has always called the shots, but that the Super Bowl-winning teams of the 1990s were actually built by Johnson.
“That is completely a bunch of crock,” Johnson said. “Jerry started putting all those titles on himself after I left. He didn’t call himself general manager and president and all that stuff when I was there. He was just the owner. Because it was in my contract that I had total responsibility for all football decisions. It was in my contract, and he didn’t allow anybody to have that in their contract after I left.”
Johnson says that he takes more pride in what he did as the Cowboys’ general manager than in what he did as the Cowboys’ head coach.
“I was the personnel director there with the Cowboys,” Johnson said. “My pride was collecting the talent and putting together the team that won the Super Bowls.”
As for the current Cowboys, Johnson sees problems with the way Jones has structured the team. Johnson said that in the NFL, everyone -- players, coaches, general managers, everyone -- is motivated by the fear of losing their jobs. But when Jones has hired himself as general manager, there’s no fear of losing his job -- and also no fear of any of Jones’s family members or other personal favorites losing their jobs.
“Really, the No. 1 motivator is fear, you know, fear of maybe letting down your teammates, of being chastised or maybe losing your job. Where’s the fear in Dallas? There’s no fear in Dallas. It’s a country club where everybody’s buddies,” Johnson said.
Johnson says that Jones wants to make sure that everybody understands that he makes the final call because he owns the team. Unfortunately for Jones, everyone does know that. And everyone knows the results in the years since Jimmy Johnson’s players retired have not been good.