The Jerry Jones vs. Arthur Blank dispute was impossible to ignore during the Falcons-Cowboys game

ATLANTA –- The chill outside of magnificent Mercedes-Benz Stadium matched the icy pre- and post-game postures of owners Jerry Jones and Arthur Blank.

This Cowboys-Falcons clash was a backdrop to a confirmed conflict between two owners once cozy but now split. Two owners at odds on if commissioner Roger Goodell’s contract should be extended and whether Goodell should even remain commissioner at all.

Jones, the Dallas owner, supports consideration on both counts.

Blank, the Falcons owner, does not. He chairs the ownership committee dealing with Goodell’s contract. He is ready to move forward with Goodell.

But Jones has thrown a haymaker into all of that just like the one Blank’s team tossed at the Cowboys here on Sunday. It was a 27-7 assault led by Falcons’ defensive end Adrian Clayborn’s fanchise-record six sacks.

Both teams are 5-4.

But both could not exhibit more divergent ownership.

Jones and Blank kept their distance on the field prior to kickoff. They never met. Not a handshake. Not a hello.

“No,” Jones answered later when asked if it was common for NFL owners to avoid each other in such a manner, let alone fail to even manage saying hello. “That’s rare,” Jones added.

So, I visited with Blank as he was leaving the stadium. We talked pleasantly about the spectacular gaudiness and intricacies of this mesmerizing venue. Blank was eager and proud. And then I asked him about Jones’ comment about how rare it was for owners not to visit pre-game. And Blank bolted. Quickly. Security surrounded him and he hopped into his waiting car.

One of Blank’s top executives told me immediately afterward: “When you get attacked like Arthur has by Jerry Jones and his integrity challenged and you call him a liar, yeah, you piss him off. But Arthur took the high road. He’s not talking about it. Because there is no telling where it would go if he actually talked about it.”

A couple of NFL billionaires are in a dissing match about NFL power and money and leadership. About NFL direction, the future, the plan.

Here is the guts of it:

Blank leads a committee of owners to negotiate Goodell’s contract. Jones immerses himself into the process and wants more safeguards, more full ownership involvement. Jones makes it clear that he thinks Goodell is already overpaid. Jones is also not happy about the NFL six-game suspension of running back Ezekiel Elliott and the promises he was made by Goodell in that process. Jones is not happy with the way Goodell managed the national anthem issue. Jones starts to put the screws to Blank and to the committee, threatening a lawsuit to block any Goodell contract movement. Jones says Blank made promises about the process that he broke.

Jones kept saying after the game here on Sunday that he was not going to talk about the dispute. But he threw a high and hard fastball in his “general” comments about where the league is with Goodell and what the league should be thinking.

He said “in times like these” that ownership should be looking at ways to “get better” and see if there is a “better way.” He said that “sometimes you need to adjust.”

And when asked about this public display, this public squabble with Blank that is real and raw, Jones said: “The NFL is very visible.”

I talked to Falcons receiver Julio Jones and linebacker Deion Jones. Did they know about the Jones/Blank feud? Did they play for their owner with an extra edge in this matchup?

What? Who? Don’t know about that, both said. Can’t comment on that, both said. Not our business, both said.

Falcons cornerback Desmond Trufant was not as convincing. Nor did he try.

“It is what it is,” Trufant said. “But none of us want to get into that.”

It’s a billionaire’s, above-the-field scrap.

On the field, the Falcons took care of their part. They made the Cowboys look lost without the suspended Elliott. They mauled the Dallas monster offensive line.

Even Jones used his folksy humor to describe it:

“They really took us to school. I feel like we’ve been taken to the woodshed.”

Sure, the Falcons played as if they had a cause originating from Blank. The Falcons clearly took on the mantra of having his back.

But it will not deter Jones. He talks about bad days and good days. He knows how to “stir it up” to create good days. It is one of the reasons he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame last summer. Jones is giving his NFL peers a combination of the risk-reward model he has lived plus that gold jacket. There is power in both.

Even on a day his team was trounced, he still left the place standing, confident in his haymakers for future rounds.

The NFL says that players play and coaches coach and owners own.

And sometimes owners tangle in a power, corporate way matching the intensity of any player-player matchup.

We are there.