Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones went off on a toot the other day, scattering f-bombs like rose petals along his merry way, and it was hard to tell if this was Jerry slipping a cog in his dotage or going full Your Crazy Uncle Merle.
The Blob splits the difference and thinks it was a bit of both.
On the one hand, Jerry is 81 now, and cogs will slip when a man gets that far up in years. On the other, he hasn't started raving about fluoride poisoning our drinking water or jet contrails turning us all into zombies, so Uncle Merle seems a ways off yet.
What he did say was no one -- no one -- could general manage the Cowboys the way he general manages the Cowboys. And so he's not going to stop general managing the Cowboys unless he's in a car crash and has to turn everything over to his kids, whom he says he trusts but, you know, not as much as he trusts himself.
That was the gist, anyway, and far be it from the Blob to say Jerry's straight-up delusional. What I will say his ego certainly hasn't shrunk over the years, in the sense that he still thinks it's Jerry's world and we're all just living in it.
It's why he's never liked it when the spotlight strays away from him, which some people say is why he ran off Jimmy Johnson, and just recently agreed to add him to the Cowboys' Ring of Honor. Johnson, these same people say, got too much credit for the Cowboys' initial rebuild under Jones's ownership, and Jerry didn't like that. So Jerry whirled him like a Frisbee into outer darkness.
Maybe Jerry really is that insecure and petty. Maybe he isn't. I really can't say one way or the other.
What I can say is Jerry the GM hasn't done a hell of a lot since Jimmy and then Barry Switzer left.
It was Switzer who delivered the Cowboys' last Super Bowl win, in 1995, and a succession of coaches with less-than-dynamic personalities have followed: Chan Gailey, Dave Campo, Wade Phillips, Jason Garrett and now Mike McCarthy. Bill Parcells and his Hall of Fame stature was the exception to tht rule, but even he was required to stand in Jerry's shadow.
In the meantime, Jerry the GM continued to deliver mediocrity, year after year after year.
In the 29 years since that last Super Bowl win in '95, the Cowboys have never advanced beyond the divisional round of the playoffs. In almost half of those 29 years -- 13 of 'em -- they haven't made the playoffs at all.
Now you could, and Jerry perhaps would, blame that on the coaching. But to do that, you'd have to forget about Parcells, and also McCarthy, who won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers in 2011.
But, yeah, no one could do the job Jerry's done as GM of America's Team. Which in an odd sort of way might actually be true.
Nothing beyond the divisional round in 29 years? Thirteen seasons missing the playoffs? For an organization with the resources of the Dallas Cowboys?
Yeah, boy. Let's see some other GM match that.
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