Jones Back Atop Cowboys' Hierarchy

New Dallas Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips, left, and team owner Jerry Jones tour the locker room at the team's practice facility in Irving, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007. (AP Photo/Ron Heflin) (Ron Heflin - AP)

IRVING, Texas -- Jerry Jones insists Wade Phillips will have as much input into personnel decisions for the Dallas Cowboys as Bill Parcells had. It even says so in his contract, Jones added.

Then came the kicker: Dave Campo and Chan Gailey had the same wording in their contracts.

So forget what's on the legal documents and focus on the reality. After four years of working alongside Bill Parcells, Jones is once again taking full advantage of his dual titles as owner and general manager.

"It's just not correct that I don't have the ability or the energy or the skills to do what I do every time I make a decision," Jones said Thursday, following the hiring of Phillips. "I talk to a lot of people and get a lot of different perspectives before I make a decision. I get a lot of input and I factor it. If I didn't get the input and didn't do the homework, shame on me."

Jones views the Parcells experiment as vindicating. He sucked in his ego and appeased his critics by bringing in a proven "football guy" to help shape the organization.

And while Jones says "We are better off in a very significant way because Bill was here," he couldn't help but point out that the Cowboys won as many playoff games under their high-falutin' coach (zero) as they did under Gailey and Campo, who were mocked for being Jones puppets.

"It didn't work," Jones said of the Parcells Era. "We had some success, but at the end of the day we did not have the kind of success we wanted."

Thus, Jones feels free to doing things another way. His way.

He went into the coaching search looking for someone who could develop quarterback Tony Romo. Norv Turner was his best bet, although Jones was so impressed with Jason Garrett that he hired him away from Miami without knowing what role he'd have.

Jones liked the idea of Turner and Garrett working with Romo and the rest of the offense. Problem was, Jones still had to fix the team's bigger problem: defense.

He could've hired Ron Rivera to put in the 4-3 scheme Rivera used to get the Chicago Bears into the Super Bowl. But Jones, the general manager, decided he really wanted to stick with the 3-4 scheme that Jones, the owner, had spent so much time and money putting together for Parcells the last two years.

"I looked at it with an open mind," Jones said of changing defensive styles. "But at the end of the day, I decided I didn't want to. I wanted to keep going in the way we were going. ...