The Promoter in Jerry Jones Just Can’t Help Himself

With a playoff team this year, Jerry Jones is still promoting his Dallas Cowboys.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is the Don King of NFL football. He had people talking about America’s team more than any other without winning a Super Bowl for 21 years. And now that his team is Super Bowl relevant, the promotion of his team hasn’t stopped.

Rookie running back Ezekiel Elliott needs 178 yards rushing in Week 17 for Eric Dickerson’s rookie record. And of course, no one expects him to get enough carries to break that record. America knows that the Cowboys aren’t playing for anything.

For goodness sakes Darren McFadden went in for the final 20 minutes of Monday night’s win. They already had the No. 1 seed in the NFC locked up so there was no reason to risk anything. So Elliott shouldn’t have much of a load against the Philadelphia Eagles Sunday.

When asked about it, Elliott told USA Today, “I always want to be out there but I know there’s a bigger purpose, there’s a bigger purpose for this season. You don’t want to risk anything. That’s not really my call to make. I’m going to trust my coaching staff.”

Tuesday in his weekly radio show with KRLD in Dallas. Owner Jerry Jones said, “We’ll see how it goes. He certainly will play and will play a lot, but you can never tell. He might find a good running situation up there and he may approach that record.”

Head coach Jason Garrett told NFL Network columnist Michael Silver, “If you start to pull back and pull back, you lose some of what you built up over all these weeks, and it makes you vulnerable. We don’t want to do that. We want to go after it.”

That’s the company line when the same company won’t play backup quarterback Tony Romo. I’m supposed to believe that the Cowboys will play Elliott enough to break the record. But instead, I suspect the promotion of a game everyone knows is meaningless.

Records spark interest and interest draws people to go to the game or watch it on TV.

Jerry’s good!