Jerry Jones insinuates Pats should take medicine

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Jerry Jones isn’t going to provide a shoulder for Robert Kraft to cry on. Speaking Wednesday as his Dallas Cowboys opened training camp, Jones threw his support behind NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

He also sniffed at Kraft complaining now after Kraft played the role of the great conciliator during the 2011 lockout and the Cowboys had an NFL punishment for salary cap circumvention jammed down their throats.

“He’s doing an outstanding job,” Jones said of Goodell. “I can tell you firsthand that in his spot you have to with people that you are counting on to help build and to help excel as far as the National Football League, I'm talking about the owners, you have to know that you're going to make some decisions that are very unpopular with that particular group. This is the case.

"I can speak to that because on a personal basis as well as for my franchise and our Dallas Cowboys franchise, we've had that happen to us. I'm sitting there living with the result of the commissioner's decision still today that I didn't agree with when it happened.”

The apparent shot at Kraft was this: “Some of the very people sometimes that have the biggest complaints, they're the ones who give you a phone call and say, 'Hey let's be a team player now and let's all get in here and realize that this happens to everybody and let's go on and compete. We've got a great league and a great game.'"

In 2012, the NFL stripped the Cowboys of $10 million in salary-cap space for the way they structured Miles Austin’s contract during the uncapped year. The Cowboys and Redskins, who were both whacked a total of $36 million in cap space, lost their appeals and chose not to fight the cases through the legal system.

The Cowboys play the Patriots August 11. If things stay as they are, no Brady for that game. To which Jones said, “I think Tom Brady is arguably as great a quarterback as we've ever competed against since I've been in pro football. And so the fact that he may not be there is substantive. I don't want to in any way say that the teams Bill Belichick puts together up there and Bob Kraft owns can't figure out a way to beat us without Tom Brady. If anybody can do it, they can do it."

 

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