Cowboys owner Jerry Jones weighs in on 18-game seasons, kickoffs and football in L.A.
Most NFL owners are singularly focused on their franchise. Jerry Jones is different.
The Dallas Cowboys are first and foremost to Jones, naturally, but the team’s longtime owner also keeps a keen eye on the machinations to the west.
Few people were more involved in the NFL’s return to Los Angeles than Jones, who brings his players to Oxnard each summer for training camp. He was a staunch proponent of the stadium plan in Inglewood — what would eventually become SoFi Stadium — and had the influence to bring a lot of fellow owners with him.
Stetson Bennett didn’t play in the Rams’ season finale, but Xavier Smith and Zach Evans made an impact in the team’s preseason finale against the Texans.
So there’s a sense of pride Jones feels not just in the league’s return to the nation’s second-largest market, but also the byproduct of the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas.
“I’m so rewarded by the NFL fans in Southern California, the dominoes that took place with the Rams and Chargers being in that fabulous stadium, and the way the Raiders ended up in Las Vegas,” Jones said last week after one of the Cowboys’ final Oxnard practices of the summer.
“I had that all thought out,” he said sarcastically with a playful chuckle. “But still it worked out.”
After an impromptu gaggle with a group of reporters focused on the state of the Cowboys, Jones spoke with the Los Angeles Times on a variety of topics including L.A., the prospects of an 18-game season and the dramatic changes to kickoffs.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is in favor of expanding the regular season by a game, which would mean get the players’ union to go along with the idea. That number was bumped to 17 games in 2021 when the league and NFL Players Assn. forged a new collective bargaining agreement that runs through the 2030 season.
The league could go to 18 games before a new CBA as long as both sides agree on that.
“It really does sound good,” Jones said of an expanded regular season. “It’s a great number for the players.”
Jones thinks the preseason should be two games instead of three, and that each team should get one at home. He said that will enable clubs to further grow their fan bases.
“With all of the investment we put in venues, a preseason game gives you a chance to have maybe a third of those fans as people who won’t be there during the regular season,” he said.
Likewise, Jones is a fan of the change to kickoffs, modified to make them safer and to revive a once-exciting play that in recent years had become a nonfactor, an almost-guaranteed touchback.
“I like it,” he said of the new format. “You can see that it’s a big play about to happen. You can also see how punitive it might be.”
As in the past, a ball kicked out of bounds is spotted on the receiving team’s 40-yard line. But now that happens if a kickoff is short of the “landing zone,” the area between the receiving team’s goal line and 20.
A kickoff by Dallas’ Brandon Aubrey sailed out of bounds in a preseason game at Las Vegas, and the Raiders had a 48-yard gain on the next play. They wound up kicking a field goal on that drive.
“It tore our proverbial butt up,” Jones said of the miscue.
Dallas Cowboys standout kicker Brandon Aubrey played soccer before making the move to kicking footballs. He isn’t the first soccer player to shine in the NFL.
Jones, who bought the Cowboys in 1989, saw his team win three Super Bowls in the six years that followed, helping pave the way to his 2017 induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Not surprisingly, he has high hopes for this season, even though Dallas has not reached a Super Bowl — or a conference title game — since winning the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the 1995 season.
Still, he takes pride in the fact there have already been Super Bowls played at SoFi and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and L.A. is getting the NFL’s marquee game again in 2027.
“I look at it more holistically, because where I am in Dallas, Los Angeles and Las Vegas are just suburbs for me,” he said, smiling. “It’s all one big picture out here. … This is a real heyday for what the NFL and football is.”
Go beyond the scoreboard
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