Shocker: Cowboys' Jerry Jones Ranked No. 8 GM In NFL Drafting
FRISCO - Conventional wisdom on Jerry Jones goes as follows:
Terrific owner.
Something, um, less than that as a general manager.
But NFL.com disagrees. Strongly.
The Cowboys,'' writes NFL.com, "get credit for (Dak) Prescott in this exercise, in addition to four more Pro Bowlers drafted since 2015: Ezekiel Elliott, Byron Jones, Leighton Vander Esch and Jaylon Smith ... It's hard to fault this team's draft process too much.''
The "exercise'' rule by the website's Gregg Rosenthal is this: "Drafting is hard. Ranking teams based on how they draft is easy. (Let's) focus on how they used their draft capital. ... For the purposes of this column, I only went back to 2015 ...''
And once they add it all up ... Jerry Jones comes in as the eighth-best draft-related GM in the NFL.
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This stuff is, of course, wildly subjective; Rosenthal himself jokes in the introduction that "all decisions are mine (and) indisputable ...'' There can be arguments about his No. 1 guy, Chris Ballard of the Indianapolis Colts, and arguments right down the line.
And there will be arguments about the No. 8 placement of Jerry Jones. Oh, yes. There will be arguments.
We have explained in this space for 30 years now that "general manager Jerry Jones'' does his job in a vastly different way than most NFL GMs do. Part of that difference isn't mentioned in NFL.com's piece ... but deserves to be here: The running of the Cowboys' front office, draft and otherwise, cannot truly be evaluated, credited or criticized without including the "co-GM/assistant-GM''-level work of COO Stephen Jones and personnel boss Will McClay. Many people don't know that. Nor do many people know the authority the head coach and his top assistants have in Dallas' draft process.
But that's OK. The Dallas name above the marquee is "Jerry Jones.'' Even though he indisputably does the GM job differently than his 31 peers ... and even as he disputably is the eighth-best GM at this particular job.
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