Jerry Jones opens Dallas Cowboys training camp remorseful, appreciative and hopeful
Jerry Jones who opened the 2021 Dallas Cowboys training camp Wednesday with some familiar old flair but also a genuine air of newness.
He was optimistic and hopeful.
He was defiant.
He was also very emotional, expressing remorse about mistakes of the past for the first time, namely for his role in Jimmy Johnson’s departure in 1994.
But most of all he was thankful and appreciative of the opportunity to be with the Cowboys at this point in time.
A year after being forced to train at home in Frisco because of the COVID-19 pandemic and wondering if life would ever be the same again, Jones is just happy to be back in Oxnard, Calif., getting ready for a new season.
“Well, I think it’s being here,” Jones said when asked why he choked up in tears at least three times while addressing the media. “What you’re seeing is just how good it feels to be here. Doggone, just as much as I enjoy this stuff, I get to thinking ‘Well, are you ever going to see that again? Are you ever going to be sitting up there talking to everybody again?’ I’m not going to apologize, but I am sensitive today and emotional about the whole show.”
Jones opened by addressing the team’s vaccination status.
The Cowboys have not reached the 85-percent player vaccination threshold that allows them to operate in camp without protocols. Jones said he is very comfortable with his team’s vaccination rate, which exceeds 70 percent. He also noted that of the 90 players at camp are not on a path to full vaccination.
Jones said the Cowboys will not be at a competitive disadvantage regarding their preparation for the season due to players not being vaccinated.
His comments were in response to Cowboys Hall of Famer Michael Irvin recently saying Cowboys players who hadn’t gotten vaccinated didn’t want to win badly enough.
Jones agreed with Irvin in saying that championship teams do whatever it takes to win.
“Well, Michael Irvin is the best example that I know of how much will and how much body language and how much heart and sacrifice mean to winning championships,” Jones said when asked about Irvin’s comments. “He is that. So, when he talks, I listen. I thought it was an outstanding message. So, that was influential.”
Jones and the coaching staff have made personal phone calls to players encouraging them to get vaccinated.
Coach Mike McCarthy said it took him a while to get on board but he is leading the charge now.
“Frankly, I shared my own personal experience where the facts that I was not particularly 100 percent on board with the vaccination,” McCarthy said. “I made a conscious decision to get the vaccination. I wasn’t the first one to jump, but once I felt that this was clearly the right thing to do, that’s why I went forward and got the vaccination ... I think some people have gone about it the same way. I think everybody has responded.”
Vaccines aside, everybody has responded and is motivated to not only rebound from last season’s disappointing 6-10 campaign in McCarthy’s first year as head coach, but also to also put together the kind of campaign it will take to get the Cowboys back to the Super Bowl since their 1995 championship.
The Cowboys believe they have the team to finally get over the hump, thanks to the return of quarterback Dak Prescott, who missed the final 11 games of the 2020 season with a fractured ankle and revamped defense behind new coordinator Dan Quinn.
“At the end of the day, it’s about winning championships,” McCarthy said. “Nothing else matters.”
And that is all that matters to Jones — now, more than ever.
He has a greater appreciation for his life and the value of the NFL on lives of the public after enduring the hardships brought on by the pandemic..
He said not coming to Oxnard for training camp last year, ate at him.
“I feel as driven as I was when I first bought the team,” Jones said. “I was scared to death then and I’m scared to death now. I worry about what’s happening out here in the economy, the COVID, and I worry about our place in it, in the NFL, and where the place is in sports. But the thing that means the most to me, and I can probably be anywhere in the world, I want to be here right now. I want to be here with our team.”
And he badly wants to hold up another Super Bowl trophy.
A Jones-led franchise won three Super Bowls in 1992, 1993 and 1995 but have just four playoff wins since 1996.
“Well, you’ve often heard me say, you would be shocked at, if I could write a check and I’d know that I was going to get the Super Bowl, what you would do with that,” Jones said. “The facts are that I would right now, if I could, and I knew that I had a good chance to do it, I’d do anything known to man to get in a Super Bowl. That’s a fact. There’s nothing, in my mind, that has a higher priority than that.”
Is it realistic? Jones doesn’t care.
“It’s a better world to be naïve than to be skeptical and be negative all the time,” Jones said before choking up again. “I do my best work, I think, when it’s more positive. I need it to be promising.”
This story was originally published July 21, 2021 at 6:40 PM.
