Cowboys Signing Free Agents? Jerry Jones is 'Wide-Open' with '99%' Statement

"I would tell you,'' Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says in a fresh take regarding spending and budget and the cap, "that 99 percent of my thinking is for this year.''

FRISCO - If you "listen between the lines'' to what Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said this week about his team's dealings with the salary cap, you may have heard - at the risk of coining an oxymoron - "a subtle blockbuster.''

Jones told us in a visit here inside The Star that “There’s an active free-agent market ... some pretty talented people out there. We want to keep a close eye on that. I never shut the door.''

That is standard stuff; "Personnel is a 24/7 business,'' and all of that. It's also standard stuff to say that a team is "wide-open'' in terms of its thinking on adding talent ... and Jones used that phrase as well.

But then Jerry added something new - and this is a quote that in our 33 years in covering Jones' Cowboys we've never before heard him utter.

"I would tell you,'' regarding spending and budget and the cap, "that 99 percent of my thinking is for this year.''

We don't know if that's true, and we haven't seen evidence of it yet. (The acquisitions of Stephon Gilmore and Brandin Cooks count as major additions, but not major costs.) But we do know that it's new - or at least relatively new, as it has been COO Stephen Jones' policy as the cap manager for the last decade to attempt to keep a present-and-future cap balance, with the thinking being that a team can create a longer window of championship opportunity.

Unfortunately, that thinking hasn't worked. The last time Dallas won big? A quarter of a century ago, when Jerry went "wild-cattin'' (that's oilman talk) in spending on talent.

Jerry has told us often that "Wildcattin' Jerry'' still exists somewhere inside of him. So that idea isn't new. But the specificity of the "99 percent'' thing ....

No, we don't believe he's talking specifically about Dallas making big bids (or any bids at all) on the likes of Dalvin Cook and DeAndre Hopkins. But if he's talking at all about what can call "putting 2023 purchases on a credit card to be paid by future years' caps''? And if he's talking about a mindset that is truly committed to doing so - at least when a smart opportunity arises?

We think Cowboys Nation would love that. ... even as the Joneses work on keeping intact a roster with new deals on the horizon for Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, Trevon Diggs and others. "Work on,'' in Jerryese translating to "noodling around.''

"I'm noodling around on contracts probably every day of my life and I've got a pencil or a piece of paper in front of me," Jones said. "So that's constant, we're constantly working on thoughts about how to give us the best value for our money, and in this particular case for the cap."

Jerry did build a bit of a framework around his "99 percent'' by noting, "Now, you’ve got to think about the impact on other years when you make these decisions.'' But, he added, "it’s all wide open for me.”

How "wide-open''? So "wide-open'' that Cowboys management is "99-percent'' committed making future sacrifices for 2023 glory? We'll keep an eye out for what Jerry Jones does next with his "noodle.''

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