Jerry Jones felt it was important to deliver the bad news in person.
The decision had been made to move on from Terrell Owens. The Dallas Cowboys owner appreciated what the star receiver had done for the franchise and arranged for him and his son, Stephen, to sit down with Owens and agent Drew Rosenhaus.
It was a cordial yet difficult conversation. Jones kept saying how much he thought of Owens. The receiver kept pleading his case to stay. Jones was doodling on a napkin that sat on the table in front of him the entire time.
When the meeting was done and the men stood up to shake hands, Owens had a request.
“Can I keep that napkin?” he asked.
Stephen laughed as he recounted the story. He doesn’t give his father’s indecipherable scribbling much thought after all these years. But he understands the fascination.
Jerry Jones presides over the most valuable sports property in the world. He’s had a profound impact on the NFL and adroitly leverages the Cowboys brand to expand and diversify his financial empire beyond sports.
And his scribbling?
“It’s as logical as what’s going on in his mind,” said Charlotte Jones, the Cowboys chief brand officer and his daughter. “It’s as clear to others as the way he speaks.
“His Jerry-isms.”
Related:From weird to cringeworthy: The 25 greatest quotes from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones
A viral sensation
Jones was relaxing in the hallway outside of a conference room before last month’s NFL owners meetings got underway. What began as a chat turned into an impromptu interview.
In making his points about how the salary cap works and why the club is taking the approach it has this offseason, Jones doodled on a legal pad. Four pages into the interview, he was still doodling.
A photo of the session was posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, along with the owner’s quote about Dak Prescott. Rather than react to what Jones had to say about the Cowboys quarterback, the vast majority of responses focused on the notepad.
The post has generated 7.2 million views.
“I hope I didn’t have any bad words on it,” Jones joked two days later when informed he had gone viral.
“I think there are a handful or more of quarterbacks playing who haven’t won a Super Bowl that will win a Super Bowl.
“I think Dak is one of them. I’m firm there. He’s one of the ones who can.”
_ Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on Dak Prescott. pic.twitter.com/pZjDACIQqA
— David Moore (@DavidMooreDMN) March 24, 2024
The Cowboys were drilled by a young, inexperienced Green Bay team in the playoffs three months ago. The organization has been bleeding talent in free agency and hasn’t done much to replace it.
It’s not surprising that most of the comments were negative. Some zoomed in on the notepad and flipped it to give a better look at his “notes.”
A sampling of the responses:
“Looks like the Cowboys offseason plans were leaked.”
“Cowboys draft plans:”
“Someone get this little guy a juice box and some crayons.”
“Hey Jerry! Can you show us an outline of your vision for the Cowboys the next few years to address the NFC title game drought?”
The responses provided a glimpse into the frustration felt by the Cowboys fan base. But what does it say about Jones and how his mind works?
‘A Beautiful Mind’
Jones remembers applying for a $6 million loan at a bank in the early 1980s. He had gone through several pages of what the bankers were looking for in their application. He began to doodle as he explained his approach and what he had put together.
Two or three pages into the chaotic etchings, he wanted to emphasize something he said earlier. He flipped back in his notepad, went about a third of the way down the page and stopped his pen to make a point.
“Like I said right here, this is what I’m capable of doing with this project,” Jones told the bankers.
“You can read that stuff?” one of the bankers marveled. “That’s a miracle.
“That actually stands for something with you?”
Jones looked her right in the eye.
“Doesn’t it stand for something with you?” he asked.
He got the loan.
Jones loves to talk with a pen in his hand. Stephen has seen it in meetings time and time again.
His father’s hand will find a point on the paper to start. As he starts to explain or illustrate a point, he usually begins to draw a line that dips. That’s when the scribbling begins.
“He can decipher it a little bit on his own, he will tell you,” Stephen said. “But I can never translate what it says.
“What is that movie? A Beautiful Mind.”
The Academy Award winning film for Best Picture of 2001 depicts the life of John Nash, a renowned mathematician who won a Nobel prize in economics. He suffered from schizophrenia, sometimes becoming lost in an alternate reality created by his delusions and hallucinations.
Stephen isn’t the only one who refers to the movie when talking about his father’s scribbling. So does Charlotte.
So do people who work at The Star now and those who no longer work for the organization. They refer to how Jones sees things in what he scrawls that others don’t.
It makes sense to him.
“It wouldn’t matter if anyone found his notes,” Stephen said, recalling how he laughed when someone came across the points of an agreement his father put to paper when ending Emmitt Smith’s holdout in ‘93. “You can’t make heads or tails out of it.”
An enlarged photo of Jerry Jones’ notepad during an interview with the media at recent NFL owners meetings.(David Moore)
Lose the clutter
Charlotte remembers asking her parents to sign her work when she was in grade school. That role usually fell to her mother, who had perfect penmanship.
One day Charlotte got to school and realized she had forgotten to get a signature. She quickly scrawled something across the top of the page and handed it in.
“What’s this?” the teacher asked.
“My Dad signed it,” Charlotte responded.
It worked.
“The funny thing about it is Dad does not like clutter,” said Charlotte, who now works alongside her father on multi-million dollar projects. “I always seem to have some piles scattered out. Even into adulthood, he’ll walk in and say ‘clean your office.’ He can’t stand it.
“He doesn’t tolerate visual clutter. Maybe it impedes his ability to create and pull things together. I think to have things structured around him allows him to make more sense of the way he thinks within that structure.
“How his mind comes together with an idea is different from how most people think.”
Incomprehensible is different from incoherent. The patriarch of the Jones family is frequently asked to bounce from a complex issue in one area of his business to another without missing a beat.
“I just think that’s really how his mind goes,” Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said. “He jumps in and out of conversations on any topic on a daily basis.
“I think that’s a huge part of his greatness.”
Jason Cohen is the Cowboys’ general counsel. He’s seen how his employer’s mind works. He will tell you that Jones is constantly doodling, literally and figuratively.
The question: Do those doodles carry any legal standing in a court of law?
“As to the legal aspect, technically speaking all those scribbles could be discoverable unless they were an attorney-client communication,” Cohen said.
Still skeptical?
The doodle that had gone viral was a topic of conversation on the family’s flight back to Dallas from the league meetings. Charlotte and Stephen pressed the issue.
“Can you really read anything you write down?” Charlotte asked.
Their father paused a second for effect.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Every bit of it.”
Charlotte and Stephen looked at each other, shook their heads then began to talk about something else.
“In some weird way, he’s Picasso,” Charlotte said. “It makes sense to him.”
Catch David Moore periodically on The Ticket (KTCK-AM 1310 and 96.7 FM) during the offseason.