Urgent Jerry Jones ready to ‘gnaw off a leg’ to get Dallas Cowboys back to Super Bowl

Jerry Jones held his annual state-of-the-team press conference to open training camp at the Oxnard Residence Inn River Ridge on Tuesday afternoon with coach Mike McCarthy and CEO Stephen Jones. The trio talked about many topics, and infinite words spent on everything but the actual game of football.

The hold out All-Pro guard Zack Martin and the state of running back in the NFL were topics du jour during the 31-minute press gathering.

A question about possible starters at left tackle and guard, Tyron Smith and Tyler Smith, respectively, was squeezed in at the very end.

The play of quarterback Dak Prescott, who had a league-high 15 interceptions last season, wasn’t asked about until a post-presser session and that came after Jones was queried about giving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a Super Bowl Ring in 1993.

There was talk about the new skytop luxury boxes, built by the same company that does suites for the Phoenix Open golf tournament, to improve engagement for the VIP fans in attendance at training camp.

But make no mistake about it, football is why the Cowboys are here. And winning a Super Bowl title is the team’s primary focus.

“We came to camp with the idea in mind, if we can have the kind of camp we want to have, that we’ve got a team that can compete for the top spot,” Jones said. “I don’t want to understate that for sure. There’s a lot of work to be done because we will play a lot of young players. But I think that when you weigh it, you weigh where we’ve evolved over the last two or three years with our defense, you look at some of the talent we’ve got, you look at Dak. I look at all of those things, I think we’ve got a chance to be a contender.”

It’s certainly not lost on Jones that the Cowboys haven’t been to the Super Bowl since their last title in 1995. It has only increased his sense of urgency to end the drought at 28 years, causing him to channel his inner Dan Campbell, the Detroit Lions coach who talked about wanting his players “to bite off knee caps.”

The years and litany of former Cowboys players and coaches who were once apart of the mission and now are no longer with the team has him even more appreciative of the opportunity at hand.

“When I look at where we are with Dak, when I think about where we are with Tyron Smith, when I see and what I’ve experienced on players that have played great for the Cowboys that aren’t here today, we need to get it done now, while we got ‘em. . .That causes you to really pop up in the morning and be ready to gnaw a leg off ‘em. So I’m very urgent.”

That urgency resulted in the Cowboys making wholesale changes to the team, the coaching staff and their philosophy following a 2022 season that saw them reach the playoffs in back-to-back years for the first time since 2006-07 and win 12 games in back-to-back years for the first time since 1992-95 only to be ushered out of the playoffs by the San Francisco 49ers in back-to-back seasons.

Head coach Mike McCarthy took over playcalling and fired long-time offensive coordinator and Prescott-confidant Kellen Moore. The Cowboys released running back Ezekiel Elliott, the team’s third all-time leading rusher and a two-time NFL rushing champ.

And the Cowboys aggressively improved their team for the first time in years by trading for two starters in receiver Brandin Cooks and cornerback Stephen Gilmore.

More than anything, the bucks starts and stops with McCarthy.

Despite being the second winningest coach in the NFL the past two seasons, McCarthy heads into his fourth year with the Cowboys firmly on the hot seat.

The former Super Bowl champion coach from the Green Bay Packers was hired to replace Jason Garrett in 2020 to return the Cowboys to Super Bowl glory.

Leaving nothing to chance to make sure that happens in 2023 was the impetus behind the decision to take control of the offense.

“It has do with Mike,” Jones said. “We’re just at a point as we have evolved, and I think we have evolved over the last two or three years that it was not so much about what Kellen wasn’t. It was about what Mike is. And so I think that we gain on it. I think we give ourselves a better chance. The point is that it was just an asset that we had that we needed to use. It was really something that I know I felt, [Vice President] Stephen [Jones] felt, we all felt would improve our chances to win this year.”

Let McCarthy tell it, the time is now for the Cowboys to win. His culture has been put in place over the last three seasons. Now his philosophy on offense is in place.

McCarthy once said that the way to break through in the playoffs is to repeatedly get there. After back-to-back trips to the playoffs, he believes the team is primed for break through in 2023.

“Yeah, it’s the consistency, in order to break the door down, you’ve got to get on the front porch every single time,” McCarthy said. “So I think we have definitely established that. It’s about winning a championship . . . So you talk about urgency, just look at the efficiency and how this operation has improved each and every year I know since I’ve been here and that’s all about getting better. Our players see that. They feel that. They trust our process. They trust the way they’re trained. And that just gives us more consistency in the area of performance. So yeah I feel great about our football team.”

“I feel really good about where we are but at the end of the day, it is a process.”

The process starts now.