Jerry Jones again proves he shouldn't be making decisions for Cowboys

When it comes to major decisions for the Dallas Cowboys it is always going to be Jerry Jones' way or the highway. The problem with that philosophy, however, is that the Jerry Jones way has proven to be a failure for more than 30 years. 

It's long past time for him to give up control of the team and hire a real general manager to fix the mess he keeps creating. 

All of that is back on the front-burner again following Thursday's conclusion of the Micah Parsons saga, with the All-Pro superstar getting traded to the Green Bay Packers for defensive tackle Kenny Clark and two first-round picks. 

In a vacuum, it's not a terrible return. Clark is a legitimate starter on the defensive line -- and a very good player -- and two first-round picks are always going to have some value. 

But professional sports does not exist in a vacuum. 

There is always more context at play, and the context here is that an in-his-prime superstar (Parsons), that is one of the biggest game-changers in the league, and a player that was trying to make it work in Dallas, is now playing for somebody else because Jones could not get out of his own way.

From the very beginning Jones bungled this contract negotiation, doing the one thing he does best — making himself and Cowboys drama the focal point, and what is best for the team a secondary matter. 

It's the Jerry Jones way. And it's a losing way. 

This situation did not have to end up the way it did. There was a perfectly reasonable outcome that would have seen Parsons remain in Dallas throughout the prime of his career and continue to be a focal point of its defense. All it would have taken was a common sense approach and an owner whose concern for the organization outweighed their ego. 

Every major negotiation with the Cowboys ends up getting drawn out into chaos. It's all part of Jerry's desire to keep him and his team at the top of the headlines. It usually results in him having to pay a player more money than he otherwise would have. And even that may not be a problem for Jerry because he gets to talk about how he negotiated and paid out this huge contract.

This time, however, the plan finally burned him. 

If you want to reach, or if you want to carry Jones' water for him, you might be able to put together a somewhat coherent argument as to how this can work out. Maybe those two first-round picks will pan out in the future. Maybe Clark is a great fit in the middle of Dallas' defensive line.

Maybe. 

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The more maybe's you throw in, the more likely it is they are not going to all pan out.

Clark is good, but he's not Parsons. He is not as disruptive, he is not as good and he is going to be 30 years old this season while Parsons is still only 26.

Two first-round picks looks good on paper, but the Packers are a pretty good team — and will be even better with Parsons — and those picks will likely be in the back half of the first-round. You hope to find a good player with at least one of them, if not both. The odds that either one is as good as Parsons are long. 

Since winning their last Super Bowl during the 1995 season the Cowboys have consistently been one of the NFL's most mediocre franchises. Never truly awful, but never good. They will make the playoffs semi-regularly, but never go anywhere. They have the longest NFC Championship game drought in the conference. They never get close to the Super Bowl and have not been bonafide contenders in literal decades. 

A sane owner would look at those results and would have fired multiple general managers for that run. Jones has no one to fire because he is the general manager. And he likes the way he is doing things. The problem is it doesn't work. It hasn't worked. And it won't work. History has proven that.