While Jerry Jones isn’t interested in signing Johnny Manziel, the Dallas Cowboys owner would like to help him get his life together.
Jones told the media on Tuesday that the Cowboys haven’t given any thought to signing Manziel due to his personal issues.
“The overwhelming response and the overwhelming mentality is for him, if we’re involved in any way, to help and encourage him to get it together, to get his issue improved because those issues, in my mind, not talent, are why he is free today,” Jones said, via ESPN’s Todd Archer. “It’s those issues, and those issues are the overriding consideration here, and how and what basis that those can be dealt with and addressed.”
Jones went a step further, however, offering to help Manziel turn his life around, and even implying that he’d be willing to give him some sort of non-playing role within the organization if it would be good for him.
“I would in any way offer to help him work to be where we all are rooting for him to be, which is having a successful life and football career,” Jones said. “I would do that. You say, ‘Well, is that because of football?’ Well, I might not have been aware of this, had it not been for football. I’m aware of it.
“With that, with me, comes a motivation, if it’s appropriate within the rules or within the guidelines of the NFL, if we can be of help in the promise of being a part of the NFL through the Cowboys, I certainly look to that. But … I don’t even dare, right now, go into picturing him in a training camp or an OTA or him in a ballgame. You don’t go there.”
Jones has long been enamored with Manziel, and it sounds as if he still would be if he could get assurances that Manziel was straightened out. In fact, it sounds like Jones wants to be the one who helps do the straightening out.
