OXNARD, Calif.– While Stephen Jones and Jason Garrett had standard answers regarding Lucky Whitehead's release earlier in the day Tuesday, owner Jerry Jones made more of an official statement regarding the matter following the afternoon practice. He didn't take many questions at all, but he certainly added his perspective to cutting Whitehead, despite finding out later that he was cleared on shoplifting charges.
"The thing that I want to do is not visit about Lucky. What I want to remind everybody is we're out here to basically add and cut players. That's what we do. And there's an art of the deal there. We don't have the same parameters of a player to be cut that you as a media might. We don't have the same parameters as the Washington Redskins or the Chicago Bears have. We have our own parameters. And over the next 30 days there will be several players that aren't on this roster. They'll be several that are here today and there will be several players here maybe (not) on our roster at the time. I can't tell you in 29 years the times that I've talked to a player that we've said, We're going to go on, and he don't make the cut and they say, Mr. Jones, we appreciate our opportunity. Why didn't you tell us early so that we'd have a chance to go be on a team and make it? So there's nothing at all unusual in my mind here. I'm not going to specifically go on about any payer but I am going to say this is business as usual and I really won't go into my parameters about why a player is here or not. And it can be different than other people in our personnel department, what have you, so I'm not going into any of that. I'm not going to go into anything about Lucky but I am going to say if you're going to get wadded up over people coming and going around here then get ready to stay in an angst because we're going to have people coming and going.
I know how much a player that is wanting to when he competes at this level, I know how much he wants to make the team. I've never talked to a player that I've said - I'm not going to talk about Lucky. I'm going to talk about players – I've never talked to a player that I didn't have empathy. Now you're talking to somebody here that if y'all had done one thing in my time and to criticize me is how I will back up a player to a fault. You've done it. You've done it for years for that. I will back 'em up to a fault so that when we do make a decision around here that's in the best interest of the team to move on, there's one thing you can forget about and that is whether you're being fair or whether you've given it consideration of what it means to the individual. That doesn't happen around here. Thank you guys."
