During an interview that aired before Sunday night's Cowboys-Falcons game on NBC, Jerry Jones was asked if Jones, the owner, would have dismissed Jones, the general manager, by now with the 123-124 regular-season record the Cowboys have accumulated since 1997.
Jones responded, "I think so."
But let's clarify that statement. Just because Jones says those words doesn't mean he would ever step aside and hire a general manager. If there was any thought of that possibly happening in the future, Jones put that idea to rest Tuesday during his weekly radio interview.
"We are not structured that way," Jones said on 105.3 The Fan [KRLD-FM]. "We didn't structure it that way with my ownership. There's no way that I would be involved here and not be the final decision-maker on something as important as players, and that is a key area. That's never been anybody's misunderstanding. It's been a debated thing, but it's just not going to happen.
"We've had success doing it this way and we're going to have success in the future doing it this way. It eliminates some very serious issues when you look around the league, as to creating an additional layer that you're continually having decisions, making changes, doing those kinds of things.
"It's real clear. I was asked the question, 'If you were an owner and you had a general manager, would you make a change?' Under those circumstances I speculated that I would probably have made a change, but that's not our situation. To change, I'd have to change myself. People don't do that.
"If you've got the commitment and you have the investment, and I'm talking about in time, effort, all of those kind of things, you change yourself. You don't change out and have someone else go in there and do it. And that would be misleading to begin with because no one would believe you if you hired somebody at that spot and really believe that he's not sitting there and ultimately at what I want to do. Somebody would say, 'Why don't you just mentally let them go do it.' I'm not built that way."
Follow Jon Machota on Twitter: @jonmachota
