Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones has admitted that he regrets firing former head coach Tom Landry almost 25 years ago.
Landry had been in charge of the Cowboys for 28 years from their inception in 1960 until Jones's arrival in 1988, guiding them to two Super Bowl rings and five NFC Championships in a Hall of Fame career.
However, Jones wasted no time in replacing Landry following three consecutive losing campaigns, and his decision looked to be a good one when Jimmy Johnson coached the team to back-to-back Super Bowl successes in 1992 and 1993.
Jones revealed that former owner Bum Bright had offered to fire Landry to make things easier for him, but the 71-year-old chose to do it himself, a decision he now believes he made too hastily.
"If I had a chance to do it over again, I would've waited a year and just got my feet on the ground a little bit more and probably just gone with the staff that we had and then later made the ultimate change that I made," Jones told reporters.
"[Bright] did insist that, 'I should make this change. You shouldn't. You should have a clean slate. I will make the change'. I wanted to and felt that it was pretty obvious that changes were being made because I was taking the team, and I wanted to look coach Landry in the eye, visit with him about that rather than having it done just through the actual purchase closing procedure that would normally come.
"But that would've been something that when I look back at hindsight, I could've taken Bum up on his offer to make those changes."
The decision is still a contentious one among Cowboys fans, some of whom are yet to warm to Jones despite his 25 years in charge of the team.
