Jerry Jones Explains Cowboys' Approach on Coaching Salaries, 'Zero Correlation' to Winning

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pushed back against the narrative that paying a head coach more money would immediately translate to success on the field.

"There's zero correlation between how much you pay a coach or how many coaches you have, as to winning. There's no correlation," he said Tuesday in an appearance on 105.3 The Fan.

Coaches are no different from players in that some who are highly paid won't deliver, while others far exceed their contracts. At the same time, it's often true that a coach's earnings, as with athletes, reflect what they have achieved already.

Andy Reid, John Harbaugh and Sean Payton are all the joint highest-paid coaches in the NFL at $20 million annually, according to Sportico's Kurt Badenhausen. Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan are next on the list at $19 million.

Each of those five coaches has been a consistent winner, and Shanahan is the only one without a Super Bowl title.

Contrast that with the fact that Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer didn't even make the top 15 on Badenhausen's list. That's not a big surprise when he had been a career coordinator before Dallas promoted him.

Jones' critics and disgruntled fans will say his remarks illustrate a wider flaw in his approach.

There are countless examples in a given season of how much a good coach can elevate a franchise. It matters.

Hiring Bill Parcells in 2003 is arguably the last time Dallas took a big swing on a coach. Mike McCarthy was a former Super Bowl champion, but his stock had fallen toward the end of his tenure with the Green Bay Packers.

Jones appears averse to paying what it takes or ceding enough authority to a young coordinator on the rise or top-tier head coach who's out of work. Imagine what might've happened if the Cowboys landed Ben Johnson or Mike Vrabel during the 2025 hiring cycle.

Instead, Dallas settled on Schottenheimer, and the results have been predictably underwhelming.

Don't expect Jones' mindset to change if Schottenheimer gets the boot at some point.