Here is something you need to know about the Cowboys, who still refer to themselves with a straight face as America’s Team: Since they won their last Super Bowl 30 years ago, the Jets have won more playoff games than they have.
Oh, sure. Since 1996, the Jets have a 7-7 record in playoff games according to the Elias Sports Bureau (they know everything), in addition to playing two more conference championship games than the Cowboys have. The Cowboys? Their playoff record is 5-13. Listen, there’s a good reason why the Jets, now under new management if not new ownership, have been regarded as some kind of league-wide joke lately because they’ve now gone as long as they have without a postseason appearance. But now the Cowboys look like a bigger league-wide joke because of the way they just gift-wrapped Micah Parsons and sent him off to the Green Bay Packers. Usually Jerry Jones just gets rolled by players like Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb when they want to get paid. This time he got rolled by the Packers.
You want to know why Jerry, the great negotiator, couldn’t afford to pay Parsons what Parsons thought he was worth? Because Jerry had already spent as big as he did on Prescott and Lamb. So just like that, between when Jerry should have signed Parsons back in the spring until Thursday, the Cowboys went from being a “now” team for the upcoming season right back to what they’ve been for a very long time: A thing of the past.
Oh, Jerry has once again let everybody know who’s in charge in Dallas. There he was negotiating like a madman through the media instead of doing that with Parsons’ agent and making such a hot — and hot-air — mess out of things. It’s why in the end, he had no choice but to move the guy to a Packers team that is younger than Jerry’s team, and more talented, and one with much better possibilities, possibilities now wildly enriched by adding the guy who was Jones’ best player to their defense.
But you can only imagine how relieved Cowboys fans must have been on Thursday to hear Jerry — the football emperor without any clothes — explain that the trade of Parsons is good for the Cowboys because it tightens up their run defense.
This is the same Parsons, of course, who is as good at what he does on the defensive side of the ball as Deion Sanders once was at corner. The Parsons who is still just 26 years old and has only played four years in the NFL so far.
As good as the Herschel Walker trade was a hundred years ago, the Parsons trade is that bad. Not only the worst Jones has ever made. One of the most monumentally bad trades anybody in the sport has ever made. All because of the hubris — hubris on steroids — of their 82-year-old owner, who operates as if Troy Aikman and Michael Irving and Emmitt Smith are about to walk back through the door.
Listen, we all know how much the Cowboys are worth. People in outer space know how much they’re worth. All that means at this point is that they have turned into the sport’s most expensive clown car. Jones has officially become the heavyweight champion of faded glory in professional football. He absolutely earned his place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was as much a transformative owner in his sport as George Steinbrenner once was in his. He put the Cowboys back on top the way George put the Yankees back on top. But the only place where Jerry leads the league now is attracting attention to himself, without any concern as to whether it’s good or bad. He just needs it the way the rest of us need oxygen. And continues to believe he is some head-of-the-list, king-of-the-hill general manager.
There was a time when it looked as if Jerry’s Cowboys, when coached by Jimmy Johnson, were on their way to being the first NFL team to win three Super Bowls in a row, and being called the greatest team of all time. Then he was vain enough and arrogant enough to think he didn’t need Jimmy any longer.
So Jerry hired Barry Switzer to replace him, and the Cowboys did manage to win a Super Bowl with Barry as the coach. They just didn’t make the kind of history those Cowboys of the ’90s were supposed to make. The Cowboys hadn’t won three Super Bowls in a row, or four. Now here they are, with no shot, none at winning another Super Bowl this season, or anytime soon.
Their last playoff game, at home, was against the Packers the season before last. They lost 48-32. Didn’t just lose, by the way. Got thrown down a flight of stairs. By halftime of that one, you actually started to feel lightheaded watching the Packers run up and down the field and do whatever they wanted when they had the ball.
Now Jerry Jones does everything except hire a skywriter to tell you just how much the game has passed him by. Did he get two No. 1 picks from the Packers for Parsons? He sure did. They’re going to be somewhere between No. 28 and No. 32, which makes them nothing more than glorified second-round picks. No worries, though. Kenny Clark, who becomes a Cowboy now because of this deal, is going to make them better against the run.
Somehow there was Kirk Herbstreit on ESPN on Friday morning suggesting that this trade might make the Cowboys stronger as a team. The implication being that Parsons isn’t really a team guy. Sure. Go with that. But wait — Dak and CeeDee were team guys when they were the ones who wanted to get paid?
No matter. Luka Doncic now leaves Dallas in his prime and Parsons does the same, except that in the case of the Dallas Cowboys, there isn’t going to be a Cooper Flagg to put a shine on the deal after the fact. Not in next year’s draft. Not in the draft after that. I keep hearing, well, Jerry did draft Parsons. He did. With the No. 12 pick. You know who could have made that pick? You and me.
This isn’t on Micah Parsons because he wanted to get paid. Jerry Jones did this to himself. He wants us to think that he and Parsons had agreed to a deal back in the spring. Without Parsons’ agent in the room?
On what planet?
The planet Jerry, is where. He’s still general manager of the Cowboys. But he doesn’t have to worry about job security. The Cowboys owner is still madly in love with him.
Put it another way:
There are 31 other owners in the league. Which one would hire Jerry to be his, or her, general manager?
DON’T FORGET VENUS’ PLACE IN TENNIS HISTORY, YANKS SET TO FACE VARSITY SKED & CHAPMAN’S BEEN A STAR …
The USTA has gone out of its way at this U.S. Open to honor the memory and legacy of Althea Gibson, born in August of 1927.
She was, in so many ways, the Jackie Robinson of tennis, before Arthur Ashe came along in the 1960s to win our country’s national championship.
It was Ms. Gibson who was the first Black player to win a Grand Slam tournament — the French Open — in 1956.
She went on to win the U.S. national championship and Wimbledon after that.
And then 40 years after she had blazed a trail like that in her sport along came Venus and Serena Williams, two sisters out of Compton, Calif., on their way to becoming one of the biggest stories in the history of American sports.
Because Serena won so much, 23 singles majors in all before she finally walked away, Venus’ own career in singles gets lost sometimes. And shouldn’t.
Venus won seven major singles titles in all, five at Wimbledon and two more at the Open.
In the last 100 years, this is the list of women who have won more Wimbledons than Venus did:
Martina Navratilova.
Billie Jean King.
Suzanne Lenglen.
Helen Wills Moody.
The older sister from Compton had game, too.
It’s why it was it was such big fun to see her back at this Open, in singles and doubles, at the age of 45, 25 years after she won her first Open in singles.
She even had enough game to get a set off Karolina Muchova, the 11th women’s seed here.
After that, she and Leylah Fernandez, a finalist at the Open four years ago, went out and won an entertaining first-round doubles match.
Venus honored Althea Gibson at this Open by still being a part of the first week of the Open.
So did Coco Gauff and Taylor Townsend and Naomi Osaka.
The line keeps moving.
Speaking of the Open: What a shame it was to see Ben Shelton have to take himself out of the tournament with a shoulder injury on Friday.
Major League Baseball is going to insist over the next couple of weeks that the Yankees play a varsity schedule:
Astros on the road, Tigers and Blue Jays at the Stadium, Red Sox for three at Fenway Park.
Somehow Kodai Senga already looks as if he needs a couple of weeks off.
Aroldis Chapman has, at the age of 37, become one of the biggest stars of the current baseball season:
Fifty-seven games coming into the weekend. 1.04 earned run average, 74 strikeouts in 52 innings pitched.
Kyle Schwarber continues to look like the most interesting slugger in the world, even in the time of Ohtani and Judge.
Incidentally: Does anybody actually believe Judge hasn’t been compromised since he hurt his elbow?
Aaron Boone on Anthony Volpe: “We just hammer the struggles, because, on some level, there were people that anointed him and expected so much.”
Those people were Boone and Brian Cashman, not to make too small a point of things.
One more time from the balcony — as we’re hearing after another school shooting that this really isn’t a gun issue — I bring you the words of the great Pete Hamill:
How many home runs did Babe Ruth hit without a bat?
In it’s fifth week, James Patterson and Mike Lupica’s new Jane Smith thriller, “The Hamptons Lawyer,” remains on the Publishers Weekly Best Seller list.
