Jerry Jones didn't talk to anyone on the Cowboys before trading for Trey Lance
Life is good when you're Jerry Jones. He's the owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, the most valuable American football franchise on Earth. Which means he gets to do whatever he wants with that team without asking anyone else for permission — like trading for former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Trey Lance last month.
During his weekly radio interview on 105.3 The Fan, Jones was asked about the Lance trade, and what the process was to make the decision to acquire him, since head coach Mike McCarthy and starting QB Dak Prescott reportedly hadn't been consulted prior to the trade. Jones didn't mention anyone by name, but said he didn't consult anyone because he didn't have to. He had all the information he needed on Lance and everyone was already on the same page.
"The way we have it structured gets a lot of criticism," Jones said. "But with the way I'm involved and have all the on-going information, I didn't have to fool around. I got it done. I didn't have to send it around. I can make that trade in five minutes.
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"I had everything at my fingertips. I didn't have to visit with anyone as to what we thought of Trey Lance, because I knew it already. It's a continual thing. In our business you have to be prepared to catch an opportunity. You can't wait to have a committee meeting over something like that, or else the train's gone."
It's clear that Jones has the final say-so on everything, but he did say that he's not the lone voice. He doesn't make his decisions in a vacuum and does consult others (like his son, Cowboys CEO and director of player development Stephen Jones), but coaches and players aren't typically part of that decision-making process. Prescott himself told Yahoo Sports' Jori Epstein last week that he trusts the Cowboys front office to do the right thing, and isn't reading too much into the trade.
Jones definitely caught the Trey Lance train before it left the station. But should he have paid so much for a ticket? Jones sent a fourth-round pick to San Francisco in exchange for Lance, which seems like a lot for a guy who has played in eight total NFL games and had just been named third-string quarterback behind Brock Purdy and Sam Darnold.
But Lance is who Jones wanted, and he was confident during the interview that he made the right decision based on all the information he had. Now all Jones can do is sit back and see if the team he constructed — Lance included — can make it all the way to the Super Bowl.
