Last week, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was effusive in his praise for quarterback Brandon Weeden.
Jones said Weeden was “a thing of beauty” when it came to throwing the football and that “you won’t see a more gifted passer, power, accuracy, the entire aspect of it.” Those observations seemed out of place with Weeden’s performances with the Browns and odd coming from a guy who has seen plenty of great quarterbacks, including the Cowboys’ own Tony Romo and Troy Aikman.
Former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson is no stranger to tweaking Jones and did so last Sunday on FOX when he asked Aikman how he felt about Jones saying Weeden throws “the prettiest ball” he’s ever seen. Aikman said he didn’t feel too good about it, which led to Jones revisiting the comments during a Tuesday appearance on KRLD.
“Because I said Weeden had a big beautiful stroke, I got accused of saying, ‘Well, he can throw a better ball than Aikman.’ Now that’s BS,” Jones said, via the Dallas Morning News. “We all know that. We all know that.”
If one wanted to, they could take Jones’s comments about Weeden to say that he threw a better ball than Aikman. Generally speaking, though, Jones’s weekly media appearances are best taken for entertainment purposes only.
Whatever Jones meant, the Cowboys didn’t use Weeden like the most gifted passer in recent Dallas history during his first start against the Falcons and it seems unlikely that they’ll veer too far away from the risk-averse approach they took in the loss to Atlanta. If the defense can perform better than it did in Week Three, that might not be a major problem. If they can’t, they’ll need more evidence of Weeden’s “thing of beauty” to stay in the playoff race.