Cowboys 'Uncomfortable' with Signing Odell Beckham Jr.? What Jerry Jones Means
FRISCO - If you don't speak "Jerry-ese,'' you are surely confused by the Dallas Cowboys owner's latest Odell Beckham Jr. pronouncement.
“I’d probably do something uncomfortable with him,” Jones said after Dallas' 54-19 Sunday win over the Colts. “I could possibly do something uncomfortable with him. I’m going to have to because he’s coming back from an injury.”
Wait. What?
We've seen this interpreted - well, misinterpreted - a dozen different ways. But having covered the Jones Era Cowboys for almost 33 years, allow us to "Translate Jerry'' ...
What the 80-year-old owner is saying about OBJ and his maybe-rehabbed knee is that at sometime during the free agent receiver's Monday and Tuesday visit to to The Star, Jerry is going to have to make a risky decision.
Is the knee fully rehabbed? Almost there? Truly back to normal next year?
“I’ll know it when I feel it. I’ll know it. I’ll know it,” Jones said of pulling that financially risky trigger with a player who wants a multi-year contract, maybe at $20 million APY. “I don’t know how to explain that, and I’ve missed with that feeling before. But it’s also worked. I think the promise of it might work.
"In other words, the willingness to take the risk can be worth the money. ... worth the commitment.”
"Jerry Word Salad''? Sure. But pick through it for the good stuff - same as this pretzel-twisty remark: "I want this to work. I want it to work. But that means I'm going to be trying to make it work. So I'm going to be looking for reason to do not reasons not to do."
Sources told CowboysSI.com on Friday that the Cowboys were informed that Beckham did not plan to actually work out for the Giants, the Bills or Dallas - and we know the Cowboys are disappointed in that. Jones was asked repeatedly about that subject on Sunday and is now being criticized for "talking in circles'' on the subject.
But we see it pretty clearly: Beckham does not plan on working out. Jerry would like to persuade him otherwise. But failing that?
Jones suggested could still sign Beckham by relying only on a physical examination of that surgically repaired knee.
The owner, by the way, is aware of the OBJ "friends and family''-driven movement to make this signing about 2023. But that's not where Jones is as the meetings approach.
“We want to certainly see something that gives us every opportunity to have a big year this year with him. This year with him,” Jones said. "We’ve just got to get down to a contract, an amount and health. There’s no question in my mind that under the right circumstances he can help us.
“He’s the real deal.''
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