Cowboys blame Trevon Diggs for being behind on injury recovery

The Dallas Cowboys are claiming to be the victim of Trevon Diggs' decision to rehab on his own rather than join the team for OTAs at the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.

The Cowboys promptly fined Diggs $500K for missing OTAs this spring. The star cornerback was upset by owner Jerry Jones' choice to punish him for rehabbing on his own.

During an appearance on 105.3 The Fan on Tuesday, Dallas executive vice president Stephen Jones reinforced the team's position that Diggs should have shown up to be a leader at practices this spring. 

Jones went as far as to suggest Diggs is further behind in his injury recovery by rehabbing on his own instead of working with team doctors and trainers.

"I think a player is much better off training with us than he is somewhere else," Jones said via Jon Machota of The Athletic. "I just think the discipline to come in every day, do the work is there when they're here. ... One thing we can do, which we will continue to do is put in every player's contract, especially guys that we pay significant amounts of money, we expect leadership and we expect them to be here.

"Certainly we addressed that with Diggs. He certainly paid a price for not being here. But we're paying a price too, because we felt like he'd might be further along had he done his rehab here. He may differ with that. But had he done his rehab here, we feel strongly that he might be further along. 

"That's in the best interest of the team and the organization that comes with getting a big contract, which he received."