Stephen Jones discusses accountability, fan frustration over Dallas Cowboys’ offseason

Dallas Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones recently joined 105.3 The Fan [KRLD-FM] to discuss the team’s offseason approach, fan frustrations and building a championship roster.

Here are some highlights, edited for clarity:

Is there any part of you that wished Jerry Jones specifically wouldn’t have said “all in?”

Stephen Jones: “No. Okay. I think if you’re not all in, in this league, you’re all out. I don’t know of any of the 32 who aren’t all in. Everybody can have their own definition of what that means, but I’ve never not known us to be all in, nor have I known anybody we compete against not to be all in. They have different strategies as to what that means, but at the end of the day, if you’re not really all in trying to figure out how to put together a championship football team, then you shouldn’t be in this league.”

For the Cowboys’ offseason, the different method you guys took was spending the least amount of money in free agency. What would you say to Cowboys fans who do not believe that y’all have spent the offseason building a championship roster?

Jones: “Well, at the end of the day, you always can only — and we spend max, max money, year in and year out — all 32 can only spend the same amount of money over a five-year stretch. When we’re all said and done, we max out our salary cap every year and we will have done that. What comes with having a good roster, which we do, we also are looking towards signing our own guys. It doesn’t mean it happens overnight, but when you’re wanting to sign players like Dak [Prescott] and Micah [Parsons] and CeeDee [Lamb], then you know you have to hold money back if you want to have a realistic chance of signing those guys.”

What does that mean for investing in the draft?

Jones: “Well, we just look forward to a great draft. We’ve got a lot of good young football players that we feel can step up. But we do have the draft coming up, we expect some good things to happen for us there in terms of where we may have some holes. Of course, as I said, player acquisition is 365 days a year. We certainly expect that to be ongoing as well, in terms of filling holes with players who aren’t necessarily in the draft. But certainly understand where people are going to measure whether you lose somebody or you replace them or don’t replace them right then and there, then we understand that. We certainly feel good about the direction we’re headed. We like our roster. We like our football team and right now we’re focused on the draft but we’re also looking at other situations that could help our team out.”

What carries more weight this season? Adding around Dak Prescott for another run? Or Prescott carrying even more of the load?

Jones: “Well, I think anytime you have a great quarterback, that’s part of what comes with accountability when you make the kind of money Dak’s making. He had a great year last year, he was I think No. 2 in MVP voting, had a great season. Unfortunately, we didn’t do what we needed to do to beat the Packers, so we’ve just got to continue to figure out what’s in the best interest of this football team in terms of making it better and giving it the best chance to have success in the playoffs.

“We understand completely until we go have success in the playoffs, there’s gonna be frustration. I mean, for three seasons, we’ve won 12 games, which is I think as much as anybody over a three-year stretch, but we hadn’t had success in the playoffs. Until that happens, we understand that we’re going to be held accountable and people are gonna look and have criticism.”

Do you feel accountable?

Jones: “Absolutely. I feel as accountable as anybody in terms of the success of this franchise. Of course, we want to have one of the top, if not the top franchise in the country, if not the world. I think we do in terms of what our brand’s valued at, we certainly want to have more success on the field, in terms of that part of it. But as I said, we’ve had a lot of success during the regular season, we haven’t had the success in the postseason. Until we do that, we understand there’ll be frustration and I can tell you this, we’ll be rolling up our sleeves and going to work.”

Listen to the rest of Jones’ radio appearance here.

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