Jerry Jones says pay and winning have no link. Dallas is testing the low end of that claim

Jerry Jones told a Dallas radio station this week that there is "zero correlation" between what a team pays its head coach and how often it wins, adding that it was a random sample of years with all 32 teams involved. He may even be right about the league. The better question is what the Cowboys get from the spot on the pay scale they have chosen.

What the pay scale shows

Salaries are reported estimates, since contracts are not public, but the outlines agree. Andy Reid and John Harbaugh sit at the top at about $20M a year, according to Front Office Sports and The Big Lead. Brian Schottenheimer earns about $4.5M, a figure reported by The Big Lead and Bro Bible, both of which call it among the lowest in the league. The Landry Hat puts him in a tie for last with Zac Taylor, and Yahoo, citing Front Office Sports, says he does not make the top 20.

A full test needs several seasons of win percentage for every coach, and a claim of zero is easy to defend when the top and bottom of the scale are not compared that way. Jones is treating the absence of a clean line as proof of no line. The narrower point is the one that matters in Dallas: a low number does not guarantee a bad result, and it does not buy a good one.

What the money bought on Sunday

Dallas is 3-5 after losing 33-30 in overtime to Arizona. The Cowboys led by 14 points early in the fourth quarter, and Gardner Minshew replaced Jacoby Brissett late in the third. Dallas did not hold. Schottenheimer is now 10-14-1 as head coach, and the NFL.com account of the game was blunt that the Cowboys keep losing games they should not.

The structure of the staff makes this a coaching question and not a payroll one. Schottenheimer is the head coach and also calls the offensive plays. Christian Parker runs the defense, and the secondary is the unit Minshew picked apart. When a team is ahead and the clock is the opponent, the head coach decides how aggressive to be on offense and when to shorten the game. One person is making those calls while managing everything else on the sideline.

Jones also said a team can be "pretty creative" in hiring coaches. That is a fair description of the plan. It is also a plan with no margin for a coach who is learning the job in real time, which is what 10-14-1 suggests.

The real argument

Paying Reid or Harbaugh does not guarantee anything. Plenty of expensive hires fail, and cheap ones sometimes work. But the correlation Jones dismisses is not what Dallas fans are asking about. They are asking whether the Cowboys have made the hire, the staff and the play-calling setup that gives a close game the best chance to end in a win.

Sunday answered that badly. A 14-point lead, a defense that could not close, and an offense that could not run out the clock add up to a result that has little to do with salary rank and a lot to do with decisions. Jones can keep the quote. The film is the better evidence.