The media is rag-dolling Jerry Jones again.

Normally, this would not interest me. This is what the media loves to do to the old wildcatter turned owner of the Dallas Cowboys.

But this time I am intrigued. Here is what Jerry said that has the media’s underwear in bunch.

“There is zero correlation (in the NFL) between how much you pay a coach or how many coaches you have as to winning. There is no correlation. And that’s a random sample of years and all 32 teams involved. So put that in your hopper and smoke it,” Jones said on 1053 The Fan in Dallas.

“You can be pretty creative in hiring your coaches. You can be creative sometime when you don’t even know you’re hiring the coaches. I’ve had some good experience of hiring people who had never been in the NFL. I have some experience hiring young coaches, older coaches.”

Jerry’s focus on creativity here is the key. (I think he probably meant, “You can be creative sometime when don’t even know [you’re being creative when] you’re hiring the coaches.”)

Coaching is about play design and play design is about genius and genius is about risk. It is like the patent system. Patents stimulate ideas that make our lives better. But ideas are risky. At formation, it is impossible to tell which ideas will change the world and which will never have any impact. For that reason, the U.S. Government does not pay cash for ideas. The U.S. Government pays for ideas only in patent rights, which give the creator of an idea a 20-year right to exclude anyone else from using his or her idea without a paying a royalty.

Jerry is simply paying for coaching the same way.

The greatest play designers in the history of the NFL are Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, and Kyle Shannahan. All were nobody who commanded relatively little compensation before they turned the Packers, Cowboys, Steelers, 49ers, Patriots, and 49ers again into dynasties, except for Shannahan who is merely an almost perennial contender.

It is true that after a nobody turns an NFL team into a champion, the nobody gets paid. Bill Belichick was the highest paid coach in all of team sports at the end of his career in New England. Currently, the highest paid NFL coaches are Andy Reid, John Harbaugh, Sean Payton, Kyle Shannahan, and Sean McVay. All have won the Super Bowl except, again, Shannahan.

An established NFL genius never uproots himself for money. Thus, to obtain an authentic NFL genius, an owner must plant and grow one himself. Luck plays a lot bigger role than money. That is all Jerry was saying.

Jerry has had a little luck with QBs, planting and growing Tony Romo and Dak Prescott into quality, top-tier NFL performers.

But he has not been so lucky planting head coaches.

If there is one thing that nobody should question Jerry Jones about it is buying risk. He knows how to do it as well as anybody who has ever lived. He made his fortune buying big risk associated with massive capital investments in hard assets like oil and gas and AT&T Stadium.

If Jerry Jones says the value of an asset is not correlated to a massive upfront capital investment, i.e., a big bet, the value of the asset is not correlated.

Never second guess an old wildcatter.