FRISCO - To Jerry Jones' loudest critics - Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, we're looking at you - the carnival barker is bringing in a "substantive" side show to the Dallas Cowboys circus.
In the quiet two weeks after he announced that the team was working on "substantive" trades, no one mocked Jones more than Florio.
"Fans and media have begun to wake up to the notion that Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones is more carnival barker than trophy chaser," he wrote last weekend. "It’s not about winning, it’s about being interesting. And he always finds ways to be interesting."
Interesting turned into action Wednesday morning as the Cowboys traded for talented-but-temperamental receiver George Pickens. Like a lot of WR1s filled with narcissistic DNA, he had emotional blowups on the sideline and and on-field skirmishes that led the Pittsburgh Steelers to choosing DK Metcalf over him.
For the Cowboys, however, Pickens is the elite No. 2 receiver behind CeeDee Lamb that not only cashes in on Jones' promise but also vaults the team up the ladder in the NFC East and NFL.
But if you expected a mea culpa from Florio, you're barking up the wrong hater.
He obviously had to acknowledge the trade as one of the day's biggest sports stories. But he twisted himself into a pretzel giving Jerry a variety of backhanded compliments.
"Jerry said they were working on substantive trades, and I said it was (expletive) and that 'Hey Jerry, we're waiting," Florio said on his Wednesday PFT podcast. "Well now they've got a receiver who has lots of untapped potential but in Pittsburgh who was, let's face it, a malcontent. I knew for sure Pickens was going to be traded once they got DK."
Don't waste your time trying to decipher an "I was wrong" out of that quote because you won't find one. It gets worse.
Florio finished by not only not giving Jerry credit for trading for a No. 2 receiver, but criticizing him for trading for one in the last year of his contract.
"Regardless of how it plays out," Florio writes, "owner/G.M. Jerry Jones has added another spinning plate to his endless collection of incomplete contracts."
Even under the Big Top, you can't please all the customers all the time.
