The Cowboys owner is — somehow — surprised his team isn’t playing for a championship

The Dallas Cowboys didn’t have a very good year, to say the least. Jerry Jones, the team’s owner and general manager, said during the offseason the team would be “all in” on 2024, and then promptly failed to follow up with that promise in free agency. Dak Prescott got hurt, the Cowboys stumbled to a 7-10 season and watched Mike McCarthy walk away after an awkward contract situation.

They’ve since promoted Brian Schotteheimer from OC to head coach — easily the least inspiring hire of the 2025 coaching cycle — a move that served as a clear sign of what Jerry Jones values most about his organization. Which makes it really surprising to find out he thinks it’s “a shocker” the Cowboys aren’t playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Yet that’s what Jerry Jones said during an interview with The Athletic’s Dianna Russini during Super Bowl week from what appears to be the NFL Honors red carpet, while also talking about taking “some pretty serious risks on talent.”

“I wouldn’t have signed Dak Prescott, the highest-paid player in the NFL, if now wasn’t when when we wanted to win. This is a shocker to be here at this Super Bowl and not have the Cowboys here,” Jones said. “I didn’t plan on that when I made that agreement with him. So we’re going to do everything we can to get there.”

Jones was smiling a little bit when he said what he said, but surely even the biggest optimist in the world didn’t expect the Cowboys to be playing in the Super Bowl this year. Some idiots (hand up, guilty as charged) picked them to be a playoff team, which wouldn’t have been that crazy considering McCarthy won 12 games for three straight years preceding 2024.

Still, the red flags were there and they were loud: The Cowboys offensive line has dealt with age and attrition, Jerry cheaped out on paying Derrick Henry and didn’t add anything of substance to the run game, and when defensive coordinator Dan Quinn walked out the door Jones should have worried way more about the defense, since it wasn’t very good before Quinn got there, either.

Now the Cowboys are doing a full-scale reboot and yet are planning to handle things with a similar approach this offseason. Jones said he expects the 2025 offseason to “be in line” with previous years and the team will largely focus on getting a new deal for superstar pass rusher Micah Parsons.

If that’s actually true, it means we won’t see the Cowboys be very active in free agency and they’ll wait until the last possible minute to figure out a deal with Parsons, while letting the market push the price up for them instead of acting sooner.

Should things unfold in a similar fashion to last offseason, it absolutely will not be a shocker to see the Cowboys sitting at home when Super Bowl LX is played this time next year, just like every single season since 1996.