Cowboys drama: Jerry Jones throws shade at Scott Linehan
Jerry Jones isn’t about to take responsibility for the lack of talent on the Cowboys offense. Instead, he’ll blame Scott Linehan’s lay calling.
Most NFL observers agree that the Cowboys have one of the weakest receiving groups in football. If you believe that, you have to blame GM/Owner Jerry Jones for failing to give the coaching staff the weapons they need. Predictably, Jones isn’t going to take any of the blame.
Instead, all he wants to talk about is the team’s play calling against the Panthers in their 16-8 loss Week 1. Instead of owning up to the team’s talent deficiencies, Jones chose to talk about how the Cowboys coaching staff needs to do a better job of utilizing Dak Prescott’s ability to run the football.
He didn’t mention Scott Linehan by name, but he made his feelings about the team’s offensive coordinator crystal clear when he complimented Norv Turner. He said the Panthers OC can be as “traditional a play-caller as you can ever imagine” but he still did a great job of “using Cam.”
You don’t need a PhD to get what Jones was implying here. He thinks that Linehan isn’t being creative enough to get this offense moving in the right direction. By praising a guy who many NFL observers believe is one of the least imaginative offensive minds in the game today, it was a clear effort to take a shot at Linehan. If things don’t improve for the Dallas offense quickly, Linehan may be looking for a new job.
Jones’ efforts to deflect blame didn’t just end there. He also miraculously managed to go to bat for his team’s ragtag group of wide receivers. He insists the group “got separation” on Sunday, but the offense failed to deliver the ball to them on time. Jones isn’t going to find many scouts who watched his team’s struggles against the Panthers to agree with him on that point.
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The unfortunate truth for the Cowboys is that these problems aren’t going to go away any time soon. They’ll have better offensive performances than what they showed in Week 1, but there still isn’t enough talent on this offense to become even an average NFL attack. That means you can expect to hear plenty of rationalizations from Jones from now until the offseason. Just don’t expect to hear him admit any fault. Heads may roll on the coaching staff, but rest assured, Jones job as GM is perfectly safe.