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Cowboys' Lack of Concern for Character Issues After Aldon Smith Signing Further Proves Jerry Jones Has No Morals

By Jerry Trotta

The Cowboys signed former Raiders and 49ers DE Aldon Smith
The Cowboys signed former Raiders and 49ers DE Aldon Smith / Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Anybody else convince themselves that they'd heard the last of Aldon Smith in regards to him playing in the NFL?

The former All-Pro defensive end had been suspended since 2015 after a series of concerning off-field issues, and the Dallas Cowboys shockingly swooped in on Wednesday night and inked him to a one-year contract.

There's no doubting that this is a potentially high-reward signing for Dallas, but the team's history of taking fliers on players with shady backgrounds is pretty alarming.

Smith was an absolute force to be reckoned with when he entered the league in 2011 as the No. 7 overall pick by San Francisco. He logged 14 sacks as a rookie and followed that up with 19.5 sacks in 2012. From there, however, things went downhill in a hurry.

The 30-year-old now has a handful of DUI arrests and domestic violence accusations on his resume (in addition to a fake bomb threat at an airport). The play-by-play of his run-ins with the law over the years is truly disturbing. Owner Jerry Jones clearly doesn't care about any of this. He just wants to win, further confirming he has no morals.

Then, we get to fellow DE Randy Gregory, who Dallas is actually waiting to get back from his second (!) year-long suspension for substance abuse. Gregory's troubles date all the way back to his days at Nebraska. The 27-year-old filed for reinstatement to the NFL a few weeks ago, and in the 2019 offseason, the Cowboys bizarrely signed him to a contract extension.

Finally, there's Greg Hardy, one of the most insufferable, grotesque players to ever enter the NFL. The photos of his ex-girlfriend after his alleged assault still haunt us to this day, and Hardy actually mustered the gall to claim he never hit a woman in an interview with ESPN.

We could go on about Hardy, but that would just be redundant at this point. He doesn't deserve the publicity. The matter of the fact is that the Cowboys really need to do some soul-searching about their apparent reclamation operation.