First of all, Jones is never stepping down as owner of the Cowboys, an asset that allows him to print money. And in that capacity, he’s always going to be an active owner, as it’s in his DNA.
But I think it’s a fair question to ask about Jones’s role as the team’s GM, which is unique for an NFL owner. And there, I think an easy thought experiment would be to consider if Jerry Jones was instead Jerry Smith, a random person who didn’t own a football team. After the ’95 Cowboys won the Super Bowl – their third in four years – Jerry Smith would have had the coldest seat in the NFL. However, my guess is that a string of mediocrity and then 5-11 seasons would have cost him his job no later than 2002. The 2003-13 Cowboys – teams that were consistently good but also never made the leap to being a legitimate Super Bowl contender – likely would have had at least two GMs. And it’s difficult to imagine that the 2014-present Cowboys wouldn’t have had at least two GMs, as well. So in sum, the Cowboys have had only one GM under Jones’s tenure, but even a fairly conservative team would likely have been on its fourth or fifth during the same period. A more hair-trigger owner might have had six or more GMs. Put differently, Jerry Smith would have been fired multiple times over.
Is Jones solely to blame for Dallas’s shortcomings? No. But he’s responsible for coaching and roster decisions, and those decisions haven’t taken the team to the promised land in 25 years, so (1) he’s definitely part of the problem and (2) any other team in the league would have made a change long ago.
