As recently as October 27, Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said the team "absolutely" wanted to give Greg Hardy a contract extension.
This came after Hardy, who served a four-game suspension for a domestic-violence incident to start the season, said he hoped to come out "guns blazing" in his return to the field, made some weird comments about Tom Brady's wife, explained how he planned to stop quarterback Eli Manning -- "Hit him in the mouth" -- and got into a sideline shouting match with teammate Dez Bryant after shoving a Cowboys assistant coach.
And through it all, team owner Jerry Jones called Hardy a "leader."
Then, last week, Hardy reportedly missed a team meeting.
Greg Hardy clarification: he wasn't late for meeting last Thursday morning, he missed it entirely. And he was fined, source said.
— David Moore (@DavidMooreDMN) November 17, 2015
On Tuesday, Jones didn't want to talk about whether Hardy did, in fact, miss a meeting, but the team owner also backed off his son's original comments about "absolutely" wanting to give Hardy an extension.
"Greg knows what's expected and nobody is more aware of the scrutiny and nobody is more aware, now ever more so, of what we expect of him," Jones said, via Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "The good news is we go forward. We see if we get what's expected of him, which I fully anticipate you would get. But we see how and what's expected of him and we go from there.
"We don't, and you know this, just the nature of this one, we don't as a practice, discuss detail of extending or not extending. I'll give an indication, but that's about it. So we'll leave it for that. I have no reason to think that Greg won't do what's expected of him throughout the year."
Perhaps Jones has grown weary of all the baggage that comes with Hardy, who is undoubtedly a very good football player, but not so good as to do anything to keep the Cowboys from losing all five games he has played (and seven straight overall). And it's probably no coincidence that Jones softened his stance on the extension talk after photos published by Deadspin earlier this month showed Hardy's ex-girlfriend bruised and injured.
"[Hardy] has a commitment to do the right thing," Jones said after the Cowboys lost to the Eagles on Nov. 8, days after the photos were made public. "We expect him to do the right thing. He has a commitment to his teammates and our team. The way it's set up in the NFL, relative to behavior, and in fact we wanted to give Greg a second chance."
Whether that involves giving Hardy tens of millions of dollars in the coming years has become another matter, however.
