Before the Cowboys take on the Bears, Tom Brady has found himself under the spotlight. His dual roles as a Fox Sports NFL analyst and minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders have raised plenty of questions around the league.
Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones shared some of his thoughts on Brady, who will notably be on the call for the Week 3 showdown between the Cowboys and Bears. Here’s a look at what Jones had to say about Brady and other topics during his latest appearance on 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM):
(Answers have been edited for length and clarity.)
With the access Tom Brady has to teams and their plans through the TV production meetings, do you see this as an issue going forward?
Cowboys
Jerry Jones: “I’m not at all concerned about it. Not at all. When he came in, that was an overlying issue about having someone as prominent as he is in media, just by the nature of what he does. He has to have a lot of knowledge about all the teams. Is that going to be a concern? I’ll never forget my first year on the competition committee, and you had guys like Marty Schottenheimer, you had guys like Don Shula. You had some of the good people that we think [are] greats of the game, as far as coaching is concerned, on that competition committee. They said, ‘You know, Jerry, everybody in this league read your signals, and we knew when you were going to run, we knew when you were going to pass, and we actually, by the way you tipped it off, knew which direction we were going to go. We still couldn’t stop you.’
“So, so much for having some of that intel that can cause you to really disrupt the game plan. I don’t think too much of that, as far as it being a competitive issue. I’m okay with Brady in the booth.”
Related
There’s been a lot of discussion about the tush push. Do you think this is the last year we’ll see it?
Jones: “Well, it very easily could be. But as so often, I’m going to compare this to Michael Irvin, the Michael Irvin rule. Michael had a technique that would give him an instant separation from the [defensive] back and of course, [Troy] Aikman had the ball there when he separated. But he’d kind of punch him, just punch him down on the hip, and that [would] add that separation. Well, it was so effective the league banned it. That’s not uncommon. Did the same thing, but for safety reasons, when we had the horse collar tackle. So my point about all of this is that they do that well because they’ve got a quarterback that is unique relative to his strength, and that makes that play go. Now they’ve got it down to an art, but their point was, ‘Others could have it down to an art, too. When do we change rules because a team has gotten excellent at it?’ Well, we’ve done it before. There’s a long history of changing rules because teams get excellent at it.”
You’ve talked about how you could use the draft capital from the Micah Parsons trade and acquire a player with it rather than waiting to draft. Would you consider yourself open for business in the defensive trade market?
Jones: “Absolutely, absolutely. I’m open for business period, relative now that we have those extra picks, and we should be. We’ll operate with them judiciously. When we traded Herschel Walker, I basically traded, I think, a two for Alonzo Highsmith. And boy, what a great player, what a great person he is. But my doctor said he was through. It was bone on bone on his knee. Well, I still brought him in. Of course, he was hurt. He didn’t play any because of that bone on bone, it couldn’t be repaired. What it gave us was the opportunity to cut and shoot, and we did do some things that you wouldn’t have done with the normal picks. That’s how Charles Haley got here. I couldn’t have done that if we’d been sitting there with regular picks. I did it because we had extra picks. I was able to trade them to San Francisco to get Haley. It was a risk. It was a real risk to bring in Charles Haley, but the rest is history. He helped us get those Super Bowls.”
Back in the offseason, you received criticism for not bringing in Ben Johnson or Aaron Glenn as head coach. What are your early thoughts on Brian Schottenheimer at this point?
Jones: “Well, I’m proud of him, and he’s basically bringing to the table everything that I thought you could put your finger on. Number one, for 30-something years, he’s been in coaches’ meetings at several different teams. He’s got a doctor’s degree on how to do it because he’s been around it, and he understands the going and coming of all of the fads that go on in putting an offense together. Secondly, he has that kind of background. But guess what? He has the freshness of never having done it. ‘This is my time. I’m going to get to show them. And of course, I’m proud of my father, but this is a time for me to get to go do it.’
“He passed early on a job that he could have had, probably, and been a head coach much earlier in his career. So I think we’ve got a seasoned coach, one that has been through a lot of battles. I think we’ve got a seasoned coach that never having done it, I agree now, head coach has got a lot more finger pointing towards you, but I sure like his fundamentals, and I like his approach too. He’s got real, no other way to say it, he’s got unique people skills, and he’s engaging. I think this will serve him well.”
Listen to the rest of Jones’ radio appearance here.
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