Just about anybody who watched the Dallas Cowboys during the 2024 season — or really, anybody who paid any sort of attention over the course of the last NFL offseason — would be able to tell you why the team fell well short of a playoff spot. While owner Jerry Jones pledged to go ‘all-in’ to try and finally get Dallas past the Divisional Round, in reality he sat on his hands, doing next to nothing to improve an aging and increasingly expensive roster. The result? A team with some talented but even more flaws, flaws that became even more evident once QB Dak Prescott was lost for the year with a hamstring injury.

Jones himself, however, has a different excuse for how the 2024 season played out. It’s not his or his son’s or anyone in the front office’s fault that Dallas slumped to a 7-10 record. In Jones’ alternate reality, he did everything he could to put his team in position to contend — and fault actually lies with the one player he actually paid.

Jones was in attendance for the NFL Honors ceremony early this week, and as is always the case with the Cowboys owner, a horde of microphones followed. When asked about the state of his franchise, he once again found a way to put his foot in his mouth.

Cowboys fans shouldn’t be mad at Jones for failing to acquire much of any talent last spring. “It’s not just talent alone, it’s got to be the right talent, at really the right economics,” Jones said. He went on to explain that running an NFL team isn’t as simple as just throwing money around, and that Dallas signing Prescott to a new long-term deal was evidence that the franchise was serious about contending in 2024.

“I wouldn’t have signed Dak Prescott, highest-paid player in the NFL, if now wasn’t when we wanted to win,” he added. “This is a shocker, to be here at this Super Bowl and not have the Cowboys here. i didn’t plan on that when I made that agreement with him.”

Not only does that description omit some very pertinent facts and insult the intelligence of Cowboys fans, but it also risks alienating one of the best things Dallas has going for it moving forward. If you’re Prescott, how would this make you feel coming from the guy who signs your checks? You’re well, well down the list of things that went wrong for your team this past season, and yet you’re the first name out of your owner’s mouth because you’re the one person he actually deigned to sign last offseason.

And that’s really all this is about. Jones would sooner die than accept responsibility for his team’s failures, but his lack of activity in free agency and the departure of Mike McCarthy means that there really isn’t much left to use as a scapegoat. Prescott is the nearest available life raft, the sole proof Jones can offer that he’s willing to invest in the Cowboys and do what it takes to get them back to the Super Bowl. The fact that running a successful franchise requires a lot more than cutting a single check is something he’d rather you not think about.