Jerry Jones takes shot at Mike McCarthy's offense, again defends Dallas Cowboys' Derrick Henry miss

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has no regrets about threatening the jobs of the hosts of a local radio show, while belittling their credibility during an interview last week.

He returned to 105.3 The Fan on Tuesday for his weekly interview on the Cowboys’ flagship station and offered no apology.

“I don’t have anything to say about last week,” Jones said. “I’m surprised that last week got the attention it got.”

Jones then said the station has the privilege of getting him, vice president Stephen Jones and coach Mike McCarthy on every week.

Jones ended the show with humor and a peace offering of sorts.

“I love the job that y’all do,” Jones said. “We all have different ways of dealing with acts or dealing with pressure. I like the way we do this show, and I’ll tell you this right now. I don’t think it does us any harm at all to have disagreements. I don’t think it does any harm to show emotion. And I think you guys do a great job of that. I try to basically have more than just answers that you can get by reading the paper. I try to do that sometimes with emotion, and I’m not I’m not reluctant to show emotion.”

In between, however, Jones acknowledged getting sensitive over repeated ‘get on your ass’ type of questions, especially those regarding the team’s decision not pursue running back Derrick Henry in free agency.

Henry, a two-time rushing champion who makes his offseason home in Dallas, expressed interest in playing for the Cowboys.

Jones never called him and he signed with the Baltimore Ravens.

Henry leads in the NFL in rushing yards (873), attempts (134) and rushing touchdowns (8).

And Henry had another great game Monday night. He ran for 169 yards on 15 carries and caught a touchdown in a 41-31 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, including an 80-yard scamper. Henry has run for at least 100 yards in four of the last five games.

The Cowboys have the worst rushing attack in the league. They are last in yards per game and last in yards per attempt. And the team is riding a franchise-record 20 straight games without a 100-yard rusher.

Jones said he has been asked about Henry every day since the Cowboys started training camp last July. And will continue to come up as long as Henry continues to play well and the Cowboys continue to struggle on the ground.

ESPN Analyst and former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman brought up Henry miss on the air during Monday Night Football.

Jones acknowledged being sensitive to the Henry conversation.

“That’s a ‘get in your ass’ type of question,” Jones said. “Yeah, and I understand that. I see that coming, and that’s real good, but when you do it several times, then you really know what what the situation is, where it’s coming from.”

Jones went on to defend why the Cowboys didn’t pursue Henry. He again pointed out the team’s salary cap situation and said it wasn’t a good fit because of their need to manage the cap with expected deals for quarterback Dak Prescott, receiver CeeDee Lamb and edge rusher Micah Parsons on the horizon.

Jones, however, went too far when he tried to make the decision about football. And said a future Hall of Fame running back like Henry wouldn’t have made a difference for the Cowboys.

“We’re not playing very good football right now at all, and it’s beyond whether or not we have Derek Henry or not,” Jones said. “Derrick Henry is having a career year. I don’t know if he’d be having that career year in our situation.”

As Jones continued to talk and explain, he seemingly took a shot Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy and his offense.

“He’s a real good compliment to the type of offense they run,” Jones said. “We don’t run that type of offense at all. Our situation is more about holding your blocks. It’s more about not making mistakes. It’s more about the receivers running through a tough man to man coverage and running on through it, and get away from the types of things that we all think we should be looking at is we’re designing bad plays, or we’re designing bad concepts. And the facts are that there’s some of that, but there’s also some of execution.”

Jones also seemingly co-signed Aikman’s criticism of the team’s receivers and coaching in comments he made on a local radio show last week. Aikman called the receivers lazy in their route running.

“Troy knows football,” Jones said. “He lives it. When he was here, he’s one of the most astute and hard working people I’ve ever seen at evaluating tape or looking at how a team is playing. Troy’s credible boy. And not only that, you can imagine he’s not just interested in taking a whack at the Cowboys. He feels as much or more than anybody does about the Cowboys. He’s very professional. I think he’s very fair, and certainly you can look at what we’ve been doing.

“You can look at such things as the separation compared to other teams. That’s that analytics that you work with today. But fundamentally, our players need to work on when they’re got tight coverage, they need to work on, pushing on through physical contact, pushing on through now, that’s just an example. That’s not the only thing, but I’m pretty confident that we’ve got the ability to coach, and we’ve got some receivers that take the coaching and can improve. That’s the big thing improve.”