Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones was ready for another question from Shan & RJ about Baltimore Ravens running back Derrick Henry after Henry had another monster performance (183 total yards, 1 TD) in Baltimore's 41-31 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football. In fact, Jones was so ready to talk about Henry, and why Dallas didn't pursue him this offseason, that he brought up the star back without being asked about him on Tuesday.
After Jones and Shan attempted to break the ice following last week's tense interview that went viral, Jones went into a long winded discussion about Henry and how he gets tired of answering the same questions over and over about mistakes he's made as the owner and general manager.
"You're going to ask me today (about Derrick Henry) because he had a big night last night. You're going to ask me again how come when Henry was available and right here in Dallas said we didn't get him. And I will tell you the same kind of question is one that my wife might asks me for 60 something years. 'Why did you do that?' And I said, 'well, I really don't know why I did that. The devil made me do it.' And so my point is those kinds of questions are pointedly toward putting you on a spot to make a certain kind of answer. I've obviously been asked that Derrick Henry question almost every day since we started training camp. And so that's a get-in-your-ass type of question and I understand that. I see that coming and that's real good.
"But when you do it several times, and of course I keep up with what you guys say when I'm not on the show, and so when you do it several times, I know that when you're asked about a question such as one that you might have at home, why did you do that? And you do it several times, then you really know what the situation is, where it's coming from. So those are the kinds of things that this show to me can and be about. For instance, if you ask me how I make a decision, I would say I maybe go back to a story of when I was buying the Cowboys and we got down to where there was a $300,000 difference and we couldn't get by it, the man that sold the team to me. And so he suggested we flip a coin and we flipped that coin and I lost, I really got screwed. I ended up with the Dallas Cowboys. My point is I don't know why I called heads rather than tails and I couldn't explain to you why I called heads rather than tails, but some of this stuff works out, some of it doesn't. The kind of thing and the kind of answers I would expect us to be talking about on this show."
As Jones mentioned, he has been asked several times by 105.3 The Fan and other media members about why the team didn't pursue Henry in the offseason. Henry, who has an offseason home in Dallas and made it known how disappointed he was to have not been contacted by the Cowboys in free agency, leads the NFL in rushing yards (873) and touchdowns (8).
However, Jones isn't so sure that Henry would be having the same success in with the Cowboys and continued to maintain that the team couldn't afford him due to the contracts they gave to quarterback Dak Prescott and wideout CeeDee Lamb, and the funds they're earmarking for defensive end Micah Parsons this offseason.
"We're not playing very good football right now at all and it's beyond whether or not we have Derrick Henry or not. Derrick Henry is having a career year. I don't know if he'd be having that career year in our situation. And that's really something you really do have to look at because if he had not had as many carries as our running backs have had, then he certainly probably wouldn't have attained the level of impact he's having," Jones said. "And then he's a real good compliment to the type of offense they run (in Baltimore). We don't run that type of offense at all. Our situation is more about, frankly, it's more about holding your blocks, it's more about not making mistakes. It's more about, in my mind, the receivers running through a tough man-to-man coverage and running on through it.
"As I've said, Derrick Henry didn't fit because principally of managing the cap in anticipation of the players that we were going to sign weeks later or anticipation of the players we're going to be signing in the future."