OXNARD, Calif. – Over the course of his life and tenure as the Cowboys owner and general manager, Jerry Jones has taken a lot of risks.
In his own words, Jones took as big of a risk as you can take in January when he hired Brian Schottenheimer to be the 10th head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Schottenheimer hadn't been a head coaching candidate in quite some time and didn't interview with any other teams after his two-year run as Mike McCarthy's offensive coordinator.
Nonetheless, Jones was convinced that his bet was a good one.
"He's a gem, he's a nugget that we rarely see that kind of experience, that kind of input when he was young," Jones said. "And then turn around and be at the level he is, the age he is, and now then he gets to try it and he's the coach, and this is the first time for it. I like those bets. I think there's an extra amount of oomph that you get when it's the first time."
In the opening six months of his first head coaching gig, Schottenheimer has done everything that Jones thought he was getting from him and then some.
"More, exceeded. He has exceeded." Jones said when asked if Schottenheimer is what he thought he'd be as a head coach.
What makes him exceed Jones' initial expectations?
"His people skills, his ability to communicate, really his understanding of his players creating, if you will, not only a principle but body language, play the game with enthusiasm," Jones said. "It's physical, it's tiring. You got to play above that, and you do that with a levity sometimes. You do it with sheer enthusiasm."
It's easy to see where Schottenheimer gets his enthusiasm from. Football is the family business in the Schottenheimer family, and Brian has credited a lot of what he's learned to his father, legendary head coach Marty Schottenheimer.
If anyone knows about football being the family business, it's Jones, who has gotten his entire family deeply entrenched in the Cowboys organization. He even eloquently described it in the hit show "Landman." As such, there aren't many conversations between the two that don't involve family background.
"When an individual has grown up and his, in this case, parents have been really accomplished in any business or any endeavor, they really have an in-depth knowledge, usually," Jones said.
"It's called osmosis. But in the case of him, his dad Marty did give him a lot of what he was about, because Marty was a natural teacher. And he taught everybody he was around, and so Brian benefitted from that. And then the fact that his dad led him towards being on all these staffs, around all these players, around all these coaches for almost 30 years, and he wasn't the head coach, he's just been around that many players, that many staff."
And now, Schottenheimer's got the chance to be around some more players and staff in his first time running a training camp. A few of those players that Jones and the Cowboys recently acquired are already making waves and standing out through four practices in Oxnard.
"I like the way [Donovan Ezeiruaku] is really, he's playing like a talented veteran," Jones said. "I like [George] Pickens, Pickens is doing real well, I think that [Tyler Guyton]'s doing some good work out there, those guys come to my mind. And then I think we're really looking with [Kaiir Elam], those guys come to my mind."
Earlier on Sunday, the Cowboys signed tight end Jake Ferguson to a four-year, $52 million extension. When the team arrived to Oxnard, Cowboys COO/co-owner Stephen Jones said that the training camp grounds in Oxnard were friendly confines for new long-term deals to be negotiated.
Ferguson's extension is a sign of that, and Jones doesn't want the Cowboys to stop there.
"Well yeah, of course," Jones said when asked if he hopes other deals can get done before the team leaves Oxnard. "It's gotten to be such the commonplace thing for people that have existing contracts to potentially want to negotiate, which creates a good topic for training camp. This goes on all over the league. You just have to take it as it comes and say, this is just a part of it."
Micah Parsons, Tyler Smith, DaRon Bland and Brandon Aubrey are just a few names that come to mind when it comes to extensions for key players that could be finalized in the coming weeks. With that in mind, Jones doubled down on his earlier statements where he said some players are under contract already, and that negotiations are a two way street.
"The facts are that most of the time these players have contracts, and some meaningful contracts," Jones said. "So you've always got the possibility that if you don't get something adjusted on that contract, you're still going to play."
"Now a lot of times guys say, well, they're implying that they might not play, and I get that too, but the fact that we've got structure here and we've allocated these dollars for the whole team, and that when we move from that, then we take away from what we're paying some of the other players. Our job is to get the best players out there with all the money that we've got to do it with."
It's no question that the Cowboys want to keep all of their best players around. It's more of a matter of when, and what the terms are, than if. And those are risks that Jones has shown in the past he's willing to take.
