Cowboys owner Jerry Jones talked to Jon Machota of The Athletic Tuesday at Cowboys training camp, where the conversation naturally made its way around to the uncertain contract statuses of quarterback Dak Prescott, wide receiver Amari Cooper, and holdout running back Ezekiel Elliott. Suffice to say, Jones isn’t real worried, for reasons that will be deeply unpleasant for anyone with even a mild blood phobia.
Part of Jones’s calm comes down to the condition and professionalism of the players themselves. Jones says it’s impossible to know whether negotiations are anywhere close on a long-term contract for Prescott, but that there’s been no lapse in the quarterback’s approach or “frame of mind” in training camp. As for Elliott, who still hasn’t attended any practices, the feature back is “in great shape” and can “hit the ground running” once his situation is resolved. Those could be platitudes from an owner who knows his way around media spin, except that Jones’s confidence is also buoyed by his prior experiences with, well, gore-soaked horror:
This bizarrely visceral detour into body horror seems like it’s maybe Jones’s peculiar way of referring to previous hefty player contracts, which he now views as panic-motivated self-injuries:
It’s not clear exactly what prompted Jones to choose such a grisly metaphor for what is otherwise a pretty straightforward point about salary cap math, but then again he has always been a real weirdo.