(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from Mike Sando’s Pick Six of Oct. 21, 2024.)
It’s been a rough week for Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but a good decade by aging Hall of Fame owner/general manager standards. Raiders fans can attest to that.
Jones’ Cowboys won three Super Bowls in his first seven seasons of ownership (1989-95). They haven’t reached a conference championship game in the past 28, most of which came after Jones wrested control of the roster from the first coach he hired, Jimmy Johnson.
Dallas’ 47-9 defeat to Detroit in Week 6 invited scrutiny, including from the Cowboys’ flagship radio hosts, which Jones used as an opportunity to command the spotlight, his specialty.
If you haven’t heard the now-legendary radio segment where #JerryJones threatens to fire the hosts at the station carrying his games, for daring to ask questions about the #Cowboys sorry state…. https://t.co/fSlGHlfvzl
— Mark Davis (@MarkDavis) October 16, 2024
Jones’ overriding focus on marketing is intertwined with his desire to drive the conversation around his team, which might work against Dallas winning at the highest levels.
Whatever Jones’ motives were in this latest attention grab, we sometimes forget he is 82 years old and has maintained a level of success that could reflect changes in productivity for people his age. His Cowboys have remained competitive through Jones’ 70s and into his 80s with him remaining GM and face of the franchise. Dallas has avoided the Raiders’ spiral when their Hall of Fame owner/GM, Al Davis, was similarly aged and empowered.
Davis is the relevant comp for Jones. Both were owner/GMs whose teams won championships before the salary cap went into effect in 1993, and before teams learned to manage the cap years later. Both had to adjust to a new world thereafter. Davis got his Raiders to another Super Bowl (2002 season) when he was 73, but his team went into sharp decline from that point forward. Jones has kept his team in the mix.
Jones is 82 years old, the age Davis was when he died four games into the 2011 season.
Davis’ ownership of the Raiders, which I trace to 1966, when he became part-owner, peaked at 146 games above .500 in his age-73 season. The team was 54 games below .500 over the remainder of Davis’ life. Jones is 33 games above .500 over the corresponding age period, but he is still measured against his franchise’s championship success decades ago.
Is 82 the new 70? Davis seemed much older in his late 70s and early 80s than Jones seems now. There are other differences.
“Al did not surround himself with people who would tell him no,” an exec who knew Davis said. “The structure Jerry has built for himself is better.”
While Davis was unwilling to cede control over personnel, Jones has leaned on his son, Stephen, and vice president of player personnel Will McClay over much of the last decade. That might be the key distinction relating to on-field success between Jones and Davis in their later years.
(Photo of Jerry Jones, right, and Al Davis: Al Golub / Associated Press)
