Jerry Jones’ attacks on the Dallas Cowboys radio partner continued Tuesday after he threatened the jobs of two hosts who asked critical questions following the team’s 47-9 loss to the Detroit Lions.
‘The facts are that if I’m going to be grilled by the tribunal, I don’t need it to be by the guys I’m paying,’ Jones told The Athletic.
The billionaire Cowboys owner was referring to his Tuesday interview with Shan & RJ on Audacy’s 105.3 The Fan. But according to one of the co-hosts, Shan Shariff, Jones doesn’t pay their salaries.
‘Is this real life???’ Shariff asked on X. ‘I WISH Jerry Jones paid me.’
Cowboys spokespeople have yet to respond to DailyMail.com’s request for clarification.
Jones blasted the hosts on air Tuesday as they pressed him on the Cowboys’ 3-3 start to the season. The 82-year-old did apologize to fans, saying he was ‘sick’ about Sunday’s loss, but dug in his heels when asked about his offseason moves.
‘If you think if I’m interested on a phone call with you over a radio and sitting here, throwing all the good out with the dishwater, you have to be smoking something over there this morning,’ Jones, officially the team’s general manager, told Shariff during Tuesday’s on-air interview.
‘This is not your job… your job isn’t to let me go over all the reasons that I did something and I’m sorry that I did it. That’s not your job. I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions. I’m not kidding.’
Jones then sarcastically suggested the radio hosts belonged at Tuesday’s meeting of NFL teams if they were such ‘geniuses’.
‘You’re not going to figure it out what the team is doing right or wrong. If you are… you need to come to this meeting,’ Jones continued. ‘You really think you’re gonna sit here with a microphone and tell me all of the things that I’ve done wrong without going over the rights?’
Speaking afterwards with The Athletic’s Dianna Russini, Jones first disputed the suggestion he was yelling at the radio co-hosts.
‘I don’t know that I would go as far as [calling] the volume connotation as yelling, OK?’ he asked.
‘I take a lot of pride in how fair and how much I try to work with the media, we’re brothers and sisters,’ he continued. ‘But I was a little frustrated there today.
‘The wrong ones were doing the questioning. Now, if those had been real fans sitting there or if there had been people that knew what they were talking about, football people, I might have had a different answer.’
Jones criticism of the radio hosts drew a furious reaction from former NFL star Shannon Sharpe. The ESPN analyst blasted the billionaire for threatening the reporter by suggesting he would ‘get somebody else to ask these questions’.
‘I hate, I detest, I despise someone that will prey on the weak,’ Sharpe said on First Take. ‘That tells me a lot about a man that has power and would abuse that power… Jerry wants all the credit when things go well but none of the blame.’
Sharpe added: ‘If the Cowboys don’t win another playoff game or another game as long as Jerry Jones is the owner, I’ll be the happiest man in the world.’
After the game on Sunday, Jones admitted Dallas’ season is ‘in the crapper’ before again reacting angrily to a question – this time about McCarthy’s future.
‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ Jones asked local Fox affiliate sports anchor Jeff Kolb. ‘I’m not gonna hypothetical with you about what I consider coaching change in light of the timing we’re sitting here with, I’m not at all.’
