Another year, another self-inflicted Cowboys mess

Give Jerry Jones this: The man is consistent.

The 82-year-old owner and - amazingly, still - general manager of the Dallas Cowboys had a remarkable offseason in 2024 in which he dawdled on contract extensions for receiver CeeDee Lamb and quarterback Dak Prescott before eventually caving and giving them record-setting deals.

Fans of Cowboys-related schadenfreude, and there are a lot of those, found this greatly enjoyable: The tough-talking owner who somehow seemed to think he had leverage where there was none ended up giving Lamb and Prescott a combined $331 million in guaranteed money and then didn't have enough cap space left to make needed roster upgrades. Never change, Jerry.

This summer, it's all-world defensive end Micah Parsons who is entering his walk year and would very much like a new deal in Dallas with a big helping of guaranteed money.

Parsons will get this contract, since he's one of the best edge rushers in the league. His new deal is as inevitable as Aaron Rodgers saying something weird or the Cleveland Browns having a quarterback problem. And yet, Jones is waffling. Despite the owner saying back in March that he and Parsons were largely aligned on the particulars of a new deal - something that came as a surprise to the player's agent - he hasn't managed to get Parsons' signature on a contract. In the meantime, three players with Parsons-adjacent skill sets - T.J. Watt, Maxx Crosby and Myles Garrett - signed extensions with their respective teams with an average of about $108 million in guaranteed money.

To the extent that a cheaper Parsons deal might have been available in the spring, that moment has surely passed, and the longer the deadlock continues, the more leverage the player has. At 26 years old, he could potentially be a free agent after the coming season.

This is, of course, similar to what happened with Prescott. He signed at the very end of training camp last season when he was also on the verge of his contract's final year, becoming the highest-paid quarterback in the game.

Prescott also suffered a season-ending injury halfway through the schedule, which helps explain why Jones sounds a little crankier than usual about the Parsons situation. In recent weeks, he has sniffed about Parsons missing six games last season (he missed four) and lamented the fact that he lost his quarterback soon after giving him that long-term deal. Bad things can happen to players on lengthy contracts, Jones noted. "You can get hit by a car," he said. This is true. Also by a truck, or a train, or, in very rare circumstances, a plane. But these are, generally speaking, not arguments against giving guaranteed money to a superstar. Parsons might get abducted by aliens in December too, but it's going to be difficult to raise that concern with his agent.

One might reasonably assume that Parsons and Jones will reach an agreement after the Cowboys boss makes a show of driving a hard bargain for a bit, although ESPN's Adam Schefter reported this week that the two sides are further apart in contract talks than they were in the spring.

All of this adds evidence to the growing pile that suggests Jones, a very successful NFL owner on the business side, is not a particularly competent GM. Just last winter, Jones dawdled - there's that word again - on a decision about former head coach Mike McCarthy's status while other teams scooped up hot coaching prospects. He eventually decided to part ways with his longtime coach, but there were few potential candidates left to interview, so he handed the job to Brian Schottenheimer, who was McCarthy's offensive coordinator. You know all those articles every year about assistants who are getting a lot of head coaching buzz? None of those were about Schottenheimer (unless Jerry Jones wrote one).

Let's run down the rest of Jones' football resume. He oversaw a Cowboys dynasty in the mid-1990s with Jimmy Johnson as coach and then Barry Switzer, but it's been three decades since the team's last Super Bowl win. The Cowboys haven't even made a conference championship game in all that time and have amassed all of five playoff wins. FIVE. (And 14 losses.) Many other franchises can boast similar stretches of futility, but, crucially, their owners (and Jerry's son Stephen) don't have final say over all football decisions. Jerry Jones the owner would absolutely have fired Jerry Jones the GM several times by now if he was named anything other than Jerry Jones.

But he's not, so he's still the GM.

That's the kind of consistency you can expect from Jerry Jones.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.