It seems fairly obvious the Cowboys aren’t interested in extending the Greg Hardy experiment, but they do have higher hopes for last season’s other risky pass-rusher.
Via Jon Machota of the Dallas Morning News, owner Jerry Jones said the team was disappointed in Randy Gregory’s four-game suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy, but would stick with him.
“Anybody who has had any type of substance treatment knows that Rome was not built in a day,” Jones said. “That’s not being too tolerant. That’s being patient. He just happens to have a job that has zero tolerance at some point for any ingestion of substance.
“He has got to work with a complete understanding that at some point there are consequences. Even if you’re making improvement there can be consequences. That is what he is suffering from and consequently our team is suffering. As much as anything, he’s got to see that he hurts a lot of people when he doesn’t really adhere to the program.”
Of course, it’s also easier for the Cowboys to be more patient with Gregory than Hardy — he’s a lot cheaper.
After he fell to the second round of last year’s draft because of a failed marijuana test at the Scouting Combine, Gregory is inexpensive for the next three years. He’s only making $525,000 this year, and forfeiting 4/17ths of that, so being patient is also pragmatic, even for a guy who didn’t have a sack as a rookie.