ORLANDO, Fla. — Jerry Jones began painting himself into this corner in January.
The always interview-friendly Dallas Cowboys team owner used two words that began to ring across league halls.
He doesn’t regret them, per se. But he’s aware of them. He knows how they’ve been interpreted and he knows that interpretation has veered from his own.
So after a quiet free agency in which the Cowboys have lost far more talented players than they gained, and thus far have not issued any major extensions to their existing stars, allow Jones to further explain what he meant when he said he was “all-in.”
“We get to be the world champion of how it works when you don’t have as much money, but make no mistake about it, with every tool we got, we’re all-in,” Jones said Sunday from the hallways of the NFL’s annual league meetings. “We’re all-in. As a matter of fact, this is rolling the sleeves up and more all-in here than we were last year or the year before.
“It can impact us for, in some cases, five years down the road.”
Jones’ salary cap concerns are far from new. He and his son, executive vice president Stephen Jones, have long bemoaned the limited “pie” they have to allocate among players, speaking of it with a frequency and tenor that seems beyond their 31 counterparts.
Sure, salary cap hits come: The Kansas City Chiefs trading star receiver Tyreek Hill is the best example in recent memory, though the trade helped Kansas City keep quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones as its trifecta of leaders on and off the field.
The Cowboys face a similar situation. Their challenge: Can they rely on their core trifecta to go all the way, when in recent postseasons they’ve struggled to go any of the way?
Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb are among the best at their position. Are they good enough to get the Cowboys over the Super Bowl hump while taking up a big chunk of the team’s salary cap? (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty…..
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