Stephen Jones Says Dallas Cowboys Are Hanging Around the Rim — That Thing From Basketball

Stephen Jones Says Dallas Cowboys Are Hanging Around the Rim — That Thing From Basketball

The Dallas Cowboys finally got some attention from the national media on Tuesday when vice president Stephen Jones dropped in for a chat with SiriusXM’s Adam Schein, where he was asked if current quarterback Dak Prescott could lead the franchise to a Super Bowl. It’s a question that’s been asked in so many previous A-blocks but is rarely posed to a primary decision-maker.

Jones’s answer made a lot of sense. For a bit. In short he does think Prescott can get the job done. But it stopped making the most sense when he landed on a basketball-based metaphor to describe the situation.

“Absolutely,” Stephen Jones said. “I mean, I totally think Dak can lead us to a championship. He does everything the right way. He’s certainly the leader of this football team. He keeps everybody motivated in the offseason. He’s got everybody working out and doing all the things that it takes to put in the work to give yourself every opportunity to win a championship. It just so happens that sometimes that old oblong football doesn’t bounce your way. And we’ve had some tough breaks and tough games there in the postseason. But, you know, we’ve won 12 games three years in a row. I think that’s right at the top in terms of what teams have done over a three-year period. And, you know, we’re hanging around the rim. We’ve just gotta go up there and grab it, to use a basketball term, and dunk it in. We’re hanging around the rim. We just gotta get the job done.”

People are too harsh on others, even Cowboys management. Sure, Jones’s little diversion won’t be putting on any pressure on Colin Cowherd in the good-at-comparing-things contest, but he’s thinking outside of the gridiron. If he were to say Dallas was “in the red zone” or “at the 1-yard line” that would be football but it would also be a specific number for people to criticize. Heck, he may be a genius for making the presentation more art than science.

Of course, reasonable minds can disagree if Dallas is even hanging around the rim, once they decide what it means. The franchise hasn’t had any significant postseason success in a long time and last year’s home debacle against the Green Bay Packers is the type of thing that suggests they’re actually standing around the three-point arc.

Jimm Sallivan