The Dallas Cowboys held their introductory press conference of the 10th head coach in franchise history on Monday, bringing Brian Schottenheimer to the people. After Schottenheimer gave his opening statement, thanking the Jones family for the opportunity and giving his regards for his family’s support, the Q&A session began.

The first question lobbed to the panel, as expected, was of Jerry Jones and why he decided to hire Schottenheimer. Why him?

Jones took a deep pause of about 10 seconds before entering into a diatribe about how the decision was made. Jones cited how every Senior Bowl and scouting combine, he’d arrive early just so he can engage with potential coaches who might cross his path some time in the future. He spoke of his familiarity with the Schottenheimer family, Brian’s dad Marty and his mother Pat, from prior times on competition committees and basically saying Schottenheimer came from good stock.

He spoke of how Schottenheimer showed deference to coaches with more experience, like Mike McCarthy and Mike Zimmer, “biting his lip” when he disagreed with some of their decisions. And then he dropped the money quote.

Jones spoke on the accusations that he only operates within confines of people who have crossed his path. He believes the opposite, despite the evidence to the contrary.

“I get my proverbial a– kicked over needing people in my comfort zone. Without this thing being about me in any way, ifyou don’t think I can’t operate out of my comfort zone, you’re so wrong it’s unbelievable.

This is as big a risk as you can take… as big a risk as you can take. No head coaching experience.”

Jones somehow believes that Schottenheimer’s 25 years of experience in the coaching profession is unique, angling that it’s not normal for someone only 51 years old. He then spoke about several of the coaches he’s had in the past, how it wasn’t only about Xs and Os, but more about life experiences in bringing in Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer and Chan Gailey.

Jones has an unbelievable blind spot to the criticisms levied against his process.

“I’ve read where I don’t have a penchant for risk taking. If you really knew my score sheet, you’d see that I have taken more risks in the last five years than the rest of my life put together.”

In football terms, that’s a ridiculous statement to try to pass off on the general public. Jones’ team has signed no external risks in free agency. Taking risks is signing outside players to large amount of guaranteed money, something Jones has proven allergic to for over a decade. He’s taken really one noteworthy risk in the draft, gambling on the red flags attached to CB Kelvin Joseph in the 2021 draft, but that’s about it.

It’s been eons since Jones gambled in the draft, trading up to snare a top prospect.

Does he consider keeping Mike McCarthy to play out the final year of his five-year contract some sort of leap of faith? Waiting until the final year of CeeDee Lamb’s contract to offer him a near market-setting deal?

Perhaps he’s speaking about the first extension for Dak Prescott, where he allowed Prescott to reach free agency, twice, and having to give him both a no-trade and a no-third-franchise-tag clause. Granted, Prescott was coming off a gruesome leg injury when he signed that deal in 2021, so Jones does get credit for that, but he had backed himself into a corner where the only viable free agent QBs were Ryan Fitzpatrick and Jameis Winston,

Regardless, these are normal risks that every owner takes, and pretending like these decisions make him some sort of maverick is a confusing spin on the situation.

But yes, hiring Schottenheimer is a big risk due to his lack of head coaching experience, but this is the exception to the rule, not the norm, and it’s still a move that checks all of the boxes of an owner who doesn’t want to stray from what’s familiar.

This is hardly a knock on what Schottenheimer might do, he could be a fabulous coach and Jones knocked it out of the park. But pretending that in all of those casual interviews he bragged about hosting at the beginning of his soliloquy and there were only four coaches who interested him, and two of those had woefully bad records, is cap.