Cowboys Jerry Jones knows time is running out -

ARLINGTON, Tex. — The middle-aged man in the Super Bowl pictures is gone, though some of what brought him there remains.

“I stand here with you as someone who’s had a dream,” Jerry Jones said at his gleaming AT&T Stadium a few nights ago, as ambitious and full of bluster as ever — the NFL’s might and swagger in human form.

But the Dallas Cowboys’ owner is 77 now, not the 53-year-old who raised the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the third time in January 1996. So much has changed since then, most of it in Jones’s favor. Back then he was a relative newcomer, burdened by neither patience nor a desire to conform. He sued his own league over apparel rights and bent it to his will. He talked big, won bigger and became the owner of the NFL’s richest franchise — valued at $272 million in 1996, it’s worth 20 times that now — with Jones its most powerful man. He won the ear of presidents and NFL commissioners, most notably the current ones.

The decades have indeed been kind to Jones, though lately the years keep disappointing him. He has influence, the finest stadium in American sports, an estimated $8.5 billion in net worth. But in Jason Garrett’s ninth full season as the Cowboys’ coach, Jones has a decision to make because there’s something he can’t broker, build or buy, and it’s the thing Jones wants more than anything: one more Super Bowl.

“Jerry’s going to compete; he wants to do everything he can, and he doesn’t give a damn how much it costs him,” Barry Switzer, the coach who won Jones that championship following the 1995 season, said in an interview this week.

For a while, Jones tried to buy his way back. With final say on roster and coaching decisions, he hired Bill Parcells, who won two championships with the New York Giants, in 2003. He traded two first-round draft picks for wide receiver Joey Galloway and another for wideout Roy Williams. This year, he made Ezekiel Elliott the richest running back in NFL history with a $90 million contract extension.

In recent years, Jones has even done something his peers thought he never would: show patience and restraint. He has drafted offensive linemen instead of divas, allowed beloved players’ contracts to expire and stuck by Garrett for nearly twice as long as Jones has given any other coach.

But now Jones, whose team again has maddeningly underachieved, stands at an important crossroads, a game with division rival Philadelphia that looms Sunday: Shake up the coaching staff or maintain stability? Remain patient or return to the boldness of the past? Stay the course or empty the chambers?

The dream, after all these years, is still out there. But with Jones pushing 80, time may be running out.

“Of all the boxes you want to check before you check out,” Stephen Jones, the owner’s son and top front-office lieutenant, said this week, “he just feels like he needs to check that box one more — at least one more time.”

Jerry Jones: Man of restraint?

It has been 30 years since Jerry Jones announced himself to the NFL by firing Tom Landry, drafting Troy Aikman and trading Herschel Walker for eight draft picks. These days, Dallas’s draft room feels less like a casino and more like an insurance office.

Jones, who declined an interview request for this story, might still be the NFL’s highest roller. But Stephen Jones and Garrett are his reliable actuaries. They sit on either side of Jones, who still sometimes feels that old itch. In 2014, the owner wanted Johnny Manziel not just because he had won the Heisman Trophy but also because he was Hollywood. A good, though not entirely accurate, story is that Jones filled in Manziel’s name on the draft card as the clock ticked down to the 16th pick. Then Stephen yanked it from his father’s hand, crossed out Manziel’s name and replaced it with that of guard Zack Martin.

The real story isn’t as exciting — Stephen and Garrett just talked Jones down — but the point is true enough: Jones wanted Manziel, the rest of the draft room did not, and the boss listened. Martin is now in his sixth season with the Cowboys and has made the Pro Bowl every year. Manziel’s NFL career ended in 2015.

“I don’t want to say [Jones] has given up some of the authority,” said one person who has spent time in the Cowboys’ draft room and who, like several others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of front-office discussions. “But he listens.”

Garrett’s offensive play-calling and game management have been justly criticized, but his voice and pragmatism — particularly in highly emotional moments — have helped build a roster that’s Super Bowl-ready. The Cowboys, who used to trade top draft picks for veteran superstars, actually retain and make those picks now: wide receiver Dez Bryant, tackle Tyron Smith and linebacker Leighton Vander Esch, to name a few franchise cornerstones.

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Under Garrett, the Cowboys hadn’t traded a first-rounder until last year, when they sent their top pick to Oakland for wideout Amari Cooper. Although it hinted at Jones’s star-chasing of yesteryear, it wasn’t just the owner who greenlit the move. Stephen Jones, Garrett and personnel executive Will McClay agreed the Cowboys needed a playmaking receiver and that the 2019 draft was thin at the position.

“Jerry's way of doing this — I know people don't want to believe it — is he really wants to build a consensus,” Stephen Jones said. “If we can't agree on a player, we don't take him.”

He does so, according to Stephen Jones and others familiar with the owner’s approach, by asking questions and attempting to pierce his colleagues’ logic. That leads to disagreements, which used to end in the owner taking some high-profile risk: For every Deion Sanders, whose signing Jones pushed through despite the deal threatening to cripple Dallas under the salary cap, there’s a costly misstep ushered in via stubbornness: Quincy Carter, Adam “Pacman” Jones, Shante Carver. Now disagreements within the front office are a sign the player isn’t right for Dallas.

Although Jones was close with homegrown pass rusher DeMarcus Ware, the Cowboys released Ware in 2014 when the 31-year-old refused a pay cut. Last offseason, Jones badly wanted safety Earl Thomas III, who’s from Texas and had told the Cowboys’ sideline to “come get me.” But the team decided Thomas, who ultimately signed a $55 million contract with Baltimore, was simply too expensive.

“Even Jerry sees: ‘Hey, you can’t just fix this overnight,' ” Stephen Jones said. “I think we’ve learned over time that you’re never a player away.”

But what if the Cowboys are a coach away? That’s the itch now, and it’s persistent. Garrett’s calmness kept his boss’s impulses at bay and helped bring the Cowboys this far. But maybe it takes someone with more fire, someone less conservative to finish it. Even those close to Garrett wonder whether it’s just time for a change.

Others aren’t so sure, worried that Garrett’s ouster might empower Jones to return to old habits.

“Sometimes you’ve got to make changes just to give your team a psychological lift,” said Switzer, who remains friendly with Jones 21 years after stepping down. “I’m just glad he’s got Stephen there.”

A ticking clock

Then again, Jones hasn’t totally restrained himself. Two years ago, he threatened to sue the NFL if its compensation committee ratified a new contract for Commissioner Roger Goodell, who Jones believed was overpaid.

It was, for several reasons, bizarre: a civil war between Goodell and the most powerful (and unpredictable) of his bosses, played out in public, pitting old friends against each other. The juiciest part was that Jones and Goodell had become close in 1995, when Jones actually did sue the league. Back then, Jones challenged the NFL’s agreement with Nike to sell apparel for all franchises and distribute the proceeds evenly. Goodell, who was then rising through the league office, took Jones’s side, lobbying other owners on his behalf. Jones won that war, and 24 years later he remains the only owner who controls his own apparel — raking in upward of $650 million each year.

But as much as Jones loves money, there’s something he might value even more. Earlier in 2017, Jones was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. During his enshrinement speech, he mentioned the Super Bowl 10 times and, at one point, leaned toward Stephen and told him he would trade all of this — the gold jacket, the bronze bust, maybe more — for one more championship.

As each year passes, the drive feels more urgent.

“We’ve had now six, seven, eight years of good drafting,” Stephen Jones said. “It’s starting to stack up on us, and at some point you hit the cap. ... We’re feeling that sense of urgency, knowing you can’t keep all this young talent that you’ve drafted.”

So when Goodell upheld a six-game suspension for Elliott that season following domestic violence allegations, refusing to hear the running back’s appeal, Jones was livid. The Cowboys, carefully assembled and packed with talent, were a favorite to finally return to the Super Bowl. Instead, the team went 3-3 during Elliott’s absence and missed the playoffs.

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Jones began that season forming an alliance with President Trump over protesting NFL players, and he ended it with a power struggle against his own commissioner. Eventually, Jones was removed as a nonvoting member of the compensation committee, Goodell was given a $200 million extension, and the conflict largely fizzled.

The men are on better terms now, though their relationship will never be what it once was, and in the past two years Jones has occasionally spoken about yet another showdown against his fellow owners. This time, he’s pondering the formation of his own television network to exclusively broadcast Cowboys games — a bigger piece of the revenue pie, sure, but a way to rattle the league’s cage, too.

Also, Jones still hasn’t entirely let go of Goodell’s Elliott decision, according to people familiar with the owner’s thinking, because he believes it cost him the most valuable thing he has: time.

“He feels the losses, unlike many owners. You talk to him after a loss; he feels them,” a person close to Jones said. “It’s tough, it’s elusive, and it’ll drive some people crazy trying to get there.”

Last Sunday, though, Jones was hopeful. His team delivered a 23-point win against the Los Angeles Rams, who played in last season’s Super Bowl. He said he was “buoyed” by what he had witnessed.

“It is possible,” he told reporters after the game, “for this team to be part of a team that they can remember all their lives, in a positive way.”

He was considering the possibilities, and for better or worse he remembers the feeling of those final seconds ticking off the Super Bowl scoreboard, the weight of the trophy, those exhilarating moments as the confetti drops. The dream, with a statement win in hand and two winnable regular season games remaining, was alive once more.

“I don’t have to think it’s something that you read about or happens to somebody else,” Jones said. “I’ve had it happen to me in many ways in my life. Yes, I think we can live a dream here.”

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