Jerry Jones is unhappy with a lot of things that are going on with the NFL right now, and it sounds like the commissioner’s impending contract extension is one of them.
In their behind-the-scenes look at the national anthem protest meetings that took place in New York last week, ESPN’s Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr. also touched on the subject of Goodell’s contract. While the anthem discussion has seemingly made it so that little time has been spent on Goodell’s extension, Jones apparently spoke about it for 20 minutes at last week’s meeting. According to ESPN’s report, Jones feels Goodell’s next deal needs to be more incentive-based.
Here’s more:
Jones is not technically on the six-person committee that determines Goodell’s compensation, but he has willed himself onto it. And so, before everyone could leave, he spoke for 20 minutes, delving into all of the league’s problems that everyone knew by heart. He wanted Goodell’s contract to be more incentive-based than it is. “This is the most one-sided contract ever,” he said. This speech, like the one earlier in the day by him, was not vintage Jones: His usual annoying but endearing Jerryisms were replaced by a palpable urgency; it seemed to a few owners as if only Jones could see that an opportunity to regain control of the league was slipping away.
A previous report claimed Jones was impeding Goodell’s contract discussions because of personal issues stemming from Ezkiell Elliott’s suspension, but it would appear the issues run deeper than that.
The NFL has enjoyed tremendous growth in Goodell’s time as commissioner, which is the main reason he is on the verge of signing a five-year extension. However, there have been questions about whether he deserves the insane bonus money he has made on top of his base salary of $3 or $4 million a year. Jones can’t be the only one who has an issue with that.
