Dallas Cowboys

Jerry Jones' quarterback comments prove he's the Cowboys' biggest problem

Published Dec. 14, 2016 8:39 a.m. ET

Dieter Kurtenbach

Even after a 10-7 loss on Sunday night, the Dallas Cowboys are the class of the NFC and should be considered the favorites to go to the Super Bowl.

There are some problems that have arisen in recent weeks, yes — the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants gave rookie quarterback Dak Prescott fits with blitzes, particularly up the middle, over the past two games. The Cowboys' offense has sputtered in turn — going 2-for-24 on third down over those last two contests.

Subsequently, there have been calls in the media to bench Prescott and re-insert Tony Romo into the starting lineup.

But those calls are unfounded — before this hiccup, Prescott was a legitimate MVP candidate and had led this Cowboys team to 11 straight wins.

Prescott might be the problem with the Cowboys at the moment, but lest anyone forget he was also the wildly effective solution to the Cowboys' biggest problem at the beginning of the 2016 season.

The Cowboys are Prescott's team — Romo said so. But technically they're Jerry Jones' team, and the Cowboys' gregarious and boisterous owner decided to chime in on the knee-jerk calls to swap quarterbacks and indicated that Romo might play again this year ... maybe.

"I don't have a definition for it, but you'll know it when you see it," Jones told a Dallas radio station Tuesday. "It's kind of like a definition I heard one time of another issue trying to define a negative topic, and they said, 'I don't know how to say it, but it's just something that when you see it, you know it's there.' We'll see it."

What on earth does that mean?

If Jones was trying to be mysterious, he's failed — there is a difference between confusion and ambiguity and Jones is firmly in the former's camp. Paraphrasing Potter Stewart's concurrence in Jacobellis v. Ohio — "I know it when I see it" — is a bizarre way to discuss quarterbacks — that phrase was in reference to hard-core pornography.

Jones' comments said nothing yet are highly problematic because they continued to spin forward a story that should have died early morning Monday. His nonsensical answer is now a Rorschach test for the entrenched members of each quarterback's camp that will keep this debate going well into Sunday and probably beyond that.

The rookie quarterback has hit a bit of a wall — that's fair to say — but anyone who has watched the quarterback play this season should believe that he can get over that wall, even if doing so is hardly an easy task.

But Jones just made Prescott's job even harder than it already is.

Great job, Jerry.

Confidence is a major component of playing the quarterback position, and while Prescott doesn't lack for confidence, the calls for him to lose his job in the media have to undercut that steadfastness, even just a little bit.

But when the owner won't back you 100 percent in an interview, that has to cut a bit deeper. He does sign your paychecks, after all, and if he wanted to make a call to the sidelines, you couldn't say definitively that he couldn't have you pulled.

There's a reason that Cowboys' coach Jason Garrett was deadpan and curt when he was posed with the quarterback switch question following Sunday's loss — a reason that Romo held a press conference to declare that Prescott was the starting quarterback and that he was fine with being the backup: The rookie's job is hard enough, and if he feels as if his first mistake will be his last as starting quarterback, he can't effectively do his job.

But Jones had no problem with sideswiping Prescott Tuesday. Maybe he thought the vague comments would light a fire under Prescott — but aren't they more likely to sabotage the rookie?

Prescott has been tremendous at remaining levelheaded, despite being the most discussed player in the NFL this season. The outside noise doesn't seem to affect him, but what about noise from inside the house? If Jones and Garrett go to battle over playing Prescott starting or not, will the young quarterback be able to compartmentalize that and perform at — again, this cannot be emphasized enough — an MVP level?

This is hardly the first time Jones' perpetual need to be in the spotlight has made things harder on his football team, but considering the stakes of the current situation, Jones' comments Tuesday have the twinge of gross misconduct.

All Jones wants is for his team to win the Super Bowl, and the quarterback he lucked into drafting (remember, he's still the team's general manager) was a major component, if not the largest component, in getting the Cowboys into position to do just that. If the Cowboys get to Houston for Super Bowl LI, it'll be because Prescott pushed them over the edge.

This is the first bit of difficulty the Cowboys have faced since Prescott came in and solved the team's last big problem. It's a second defining moment for the team, and instead of getting out of the way and letting his coaches and players do what they need to do to get back on track — they're not that far off course — Jones wants to steal some of that spotlight.

Is it any wonder why the Cowboys haven't won a Super Bowl in two decades?