by: Chad Stanton
A man willing to make the decisions other men won’t
With the NFL draft being delayed and the Dallas Mavericks participating in playoff basketball I ended up skipping a lot of my usual pre-draft routine. I watched bowl games when I could, ignored the combine, and skipped at least 1,000 mock drafts. I kept myself updated with where free agents were going only in passing and gave the only sustained football attention I had to whatever moves the Dallas Cowboys were making instead of the league as a whole. Basically I acted like a casual fan instead of a football junkie.
Watching the draft after stepping away for a while allowed me to shut off the part of my brain that is convinced of it’s ability to be a NFL GM and focus on the entertaining aspects of the off season highlight and goodness does Jerry Jones provide a ton of entertainment for the league.
Apparently in my basketball induced fugue I missed the entire Johnny “Lil’ Romo” Manziel movement and the subsequent speculation that the Cowboys would provide the circus of all circuses and draft him to back up or replace Tony Romo.
As is the case with most sports #hottakes Skip Bayless was squarely in the center of the maelstrom with the hottest take of them all. Tony Romo’s back surgery made the idea just plausible enough for serious fans to grasp onto the idea. Before long the respectable “establishment” sportswriters were getting in on the act. Peter King was “absolutely buying” Johnny Football to Dallas. Before the draft it all reached a fever pitch with Johnny Manziel posing with the Cowboys current headline grabber Dez Bryant at a pre-draft party.
Everyone was primed and ready for what went from a wacky if improbable idea to what turned into something of a certainty all while I was busy rooting on Monta Ellis and the Mavericks.
During the draft I logged onto twitter and saw the usual commentary greeting me except with an underlying excitement at yet another embarrassing moment for the Cowboys lying right around the corner with pick number 16. I started to get a knot in my stomach. This made no sense. Tony Romo is on the other side of 30 but the Cowboys could use more help at Safety, Defensive Line, Cornerback, Line Backer, and in the offensive line. We needed just about everything except for a Quarterback. Johnny Manziel kept sliding down the draft board and the knot in my stomach grew tighter. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad pick after all. He’s won the Heisman, he’s made Texas A&M relevant again, he kicks it with Drake. Tony Romo is on the other side of 30. Johnny Manziel could sit and learn and clean up his progression reads. Finally the moment came, the Dallas Cowboys were on the clock and with the 16th selection of the 2014 NFL Draft they choose…Zack Martin from the University of Notre Dame. Relief. I can look at my twitter feed again. I’d rather have Ha Ha Clinton-Dix but at least we didn’t re-establish ourselves as a gaudy laughingstock. At least it wasn’t a repeat of last season’s Broncos game.
This draft with it’s Johnny Football hype and the anticipation of a train wreck in Dallas was all made possible by Jerry Jones. His persona as a gambler, the wildcatter who will roll the dice, has become a draw on it’s own. In some ways this is always what Jerry wanted. When Jimmy Johnson was soaking up all the glory from those 90′s Era Cowboy Super Bowls Jerry felt like he was given short shrift due to the personality of his head coach. After a couple of decades of work Jerry Jones is synonymous with the star. As a Cowboys fan I have a love hate relationship with Jerry Jones. I can appreciate the fact that Jerry Jones has worked to make the Cowboys so ubiquitous that I never have to complain about my favorite team never getting the attention it deserves. If anything Cowboys fans have been pleading for just the opposite, hoping that some away time may cure whatever ails these spotlight drenched 8-8 squads. This is all a result of the skill of Jerry Jones in marketing and promotion. It’s his skills as a NFL GM that has launched memes like this one from Cowboys fans.
But what if we could have the best of both worlds? Fans around the league were left disappointed when Jerry Jones, a man who is easily caricatured as a rich version of Yosemite Sam, took the “safe” pick. This didn’t prevent a lot of words and ink being spilled to analyze Jerry Jones post draft comments and dissecting “what it all means” when your crazy uncle decides to buy the sensible station wagon.
I don’t know that we’ll be able to enjoy this new slightly Flander-ized version of Jerry Jones for long. As a Cowboys fan I’d love to have our general manager become more known for making boring sensible decisions instead of having his own brand of eyeglass wipes but it’s hard for a leopard to change his spots. What I do know for sure is that Jerry Jones makes the NFL a more interesting league to follow. Other fans, rightfully, mock his past talent evaluation and foot to mouth ability but when they’re alone and honest with themselves, they need Jerry Jones in the spotlight just as much as he seems to need it.