At ESPN.com, there’s a story detailing NFL labor negotiations from 2020.

It’s a pretty fascinating read that centers on DeMaurice Smith and the talks that involved playing a 17th or 18th game in future years. It talks about how he came to power and has some interesting details regarding his relationships with both the players and owners.

But halfway through the story is a passage about the 2011 negotiations, and it contains this amazing line from Jerry Jones:

It would turn out the deal that the union turned down would have been roughly $1 billion better for the players than the deal they would cut months later, sources say.

Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys took the floor: “Look, my daddy grew up on a farm in southwest Missouri. Every so often in the spring, the wind would come from a different part of the country, and the moon would set a different way, and the owls would start f—ing the chickens.”

Nobody knew where he was going with this story.

“The owls are f—ing the chickens,” Jones continued. “It makes no sense that they turned this down, but it’s a great thing for us.”

The owls are fucking the chickens? That sounds like something Jerry would say. This is a very Jerry Jones way of simply saying that something does not make sense. The players basically turned down a deal that would have benefited them more.

This is a great phrase to add to the vocabulary. “The owls are fucking the chickens.” Jerry always has the right words for any situation.