Nick Wright isn’t letting Jerry Jones slide for his latest contract negotiation tactics. The Fox Sports host took direct aim at the Dallas Cowboys owner this week, calling out Jones for bypassing proper NFL channels while dealing with wide receiver George Pickens.
He also pointed a finger at the Dallas media corps for giving the billionaire owner a free pass on a blatant collective bargaining agreement violation.
Jerry Jones Plays by His Own Rules in Cowboys Negotiations
The Cowboys slapped the franchise tag on Pickens earlier this offseason, but securing a long-term deal remains a headache. Jones recently suggested he was communicating directly with Pickens about his contract, claiming the involvement of agent David Mulugheta wouldn’t affect the process.
This strategy mirrors the exact playbook Jones used last summer during his bitter holdout battle with Micah Parsons, another Mulugheta client. Jones admitted to discussing a new deal directly with Parsons during what the star pass rusher thought was a routine leadership meeting.
Parsons subsequently demanded a trade in August 2025, ripping the organization for unethical backdoor negotiations.
“It’s against the collective bargaining agreement,” Wright said on his show, “First Things First.” “George Pickens has an agent. It’s the same agent Micah Parsons had. And this came up when the Micah Parsons thing went awry. Jerry was like, you know, it won’t affect the negotiation. And David Mulugheta said it won’t affect the negotiation. Great. We know David Mulugheta feels, especially with the Cowboys, I’d assume with everyone, talk to me, not my client. Let me earn my 3%. This is ridiculous.”
Wright opted to withhold on the deeper implications of the ongoing friction between the front office and the players but ultimately chalked the owner’s behavior up to a familiar, albeit frustrating, routine.
“And I don’t even have the… I am going to, out of kindness and to save myself and the show a headache, not really dive into the real implications of daddy said, mama said, and that thing,” Wright said. “And I’ll just say he’s just an old man and he’s being folksy. Fine. But I don’t, I really don’t like that.”
Dallas Media Missed the Mark on George Pickens
The most baffling part of the Pickens saga isn’t that Jones is skirting the rules. It is that the reporters covering the team daily failed to press him on it. Wright expressed his disappointment with the lack of pushback.
“I understand, Cowboys media, it’s a very interesting beat,” Wright said. “The owner is so accessible and all of it. But, and so I’m not, and it’s a hard job. I’m not criticizing it. But there’s a lot of, like, jocularity when I would think, it just surprised me nobody’s like, hey, Jerry, isn’t that against the rules?”
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Reporters had a golden opportunity to connect the dots between the botched Parsons negotiations and the current Pickens situation. Instead, Jones dictated the narrative unopposed.
“When you’re like, hey, you can talk with the player,” Wright continued. “Didn’t this come up with a player last year that actually you can’t negotiate contracts with a player? He’d be like, I’m just saying if it were to happen. But, I mean, I don’t, I just don’t get it.”
The Cowboys are playing a dangerous game by alienating Mulugheta. Bypassing one of the sport’s most powerful agents twice in consecutive offseasons guarantees friction.
