Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones recently joined 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) to discuss if he ever thinks about the team passing up on T.J. Watt in the 2017 draft, Mazi Smith’s positive progress and more.
Here are some highlights, edited for length and clarity:
How often do you think of Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt and what could have been here? Do you allow yourself to go there?
Jones: “You know, I do but I don’t. There’s so many players that are around the league that you could draft and have. There’s an old adage, it’s not the ones that you don’t have, it’s the ones you have that you need to worry about. So I look at players all the time and when I see them playing well, I say, well, they’re playing up to how we had them evaluated or how they weren’t evaluated, either way. Of course, you know that for every Watt, there’s 10 others that haven’t done as well that you could have drafted. Then there are the ones you draft, which is what counts.”
How encouraged are you by the progression we’ve seen the last couple of weeks from Mazi Smith?
Jones: “Well, I think he’s an exceptional athlete, rare athlete. For his size, I don’t know that I’ve seen anybody have his skills. He’s also got inordinate strength. If he can progress in terms of just the football internal aspect of it and just the grit and just the sustaining a level of production that goes with being a pro, if he can do that, then we’ve got us something. And that’s what we wanted was really a star player, you might say. Of course, you dream here a little bit but that’s what you’re looking for here because we’re drafting with our No. 1 pick.”
When your team sustains injuries to big names like DaRon Bland, Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence, how does that impact your evaluation of the results Mike McCarthy produces?
Jones: “That’s why you say, ‘Well, it’s a record thing. It’s either you did or you didn’t.’ As Bill Parcells said, your record is what you are. That‘s why you look behind that and you look at other nuances, one of them will be how you dealt through the years, how you dealt with this time when you have to step up and replace what’s out on the field. That’s a part of the game. It’s as much a part of the game as a kickoff.”
You look at the division and see Dan Quinn’s Commanders at the top. What do you think about the job he’s done to start the year?
Jones: “We have all the appreciation you could possibly have for Dan as a coach. He’s an outstanding coach, that’s why we had him here for the years that we did. We know that he’s going to be formidable, he’s really I think picked up well with their quarterback. They know how to use him. I think he ran the ball 20 times the other day. So they’ve got a young guy that they can use and he’s got a system in place that’s working real well. They’re going to be tough these two games we play against them.”
Listen to the rest of Jones’ radio appearance here.
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