Jerry Jones admits Cowboys are not among the NFLs best
A lot can change in three weeks in the NFL. Just ask Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, whose team lost its third straight game on Sunday, falling to the previously winless New York Jets in what Jones admitted was “a bloody nose to us.”
After his team opened the season with three straight wins, Jones has cast aside thoughts of NFL-wide dominance and, at least for the moment, is looking at the NFC East and calculating how to conquer it, starting with Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles. Both teams are 3-3.
“I think it’s all about where you end up in your division,” Jones told reporters Sunday evening at MetLife Stadium. “I think the competition against each other and the competition within the division, I think that’s where it all is.
“Now, ultimately, if you’re one of the really top teams, which we’re not, we are not … I hope that someday this season we could be one of the top teams. We certainly were not tonight. I hope that we can do better than just win our division, although I’ll take that right now in this circumstance. But I hope that we can get out there and get a little special positioning in the playoffs.”
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The Cowboys and Eagles go into Sunday night’s game at AT&T Stadium tied atop the division, with the Giants at 2-4 and Redskins 1-5. At the moment, the Cowboys hold the tiebreaker because of a better record in the division, but the season isn’t halfway over yet and the first round of divisional matchups hasn’t been completed.
“This was a big game for us,” Jones said of the 24-22 loss to the Jets. “Every one in your division is big, but this was a big game. We could’ve been 4-2 … I don’t care if they’re 5-0 and 1-4. We suffered another loss because of it.
“It’s a bloody nose to us.”
The loss fell on the 77th birthday of a man who has made no secret that he wants to win a Super Bowl ASAP and it marked the first time since 1999 that the Cowboys had lost to an opponent with an 0-4 or worse record. It also marked the Cowboys’ first three-game losing streak since late in the 2017 season.
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As eager as he is to get to a Super Bowl, Jones said that Coach Jason Garrett’s job isn’t in jeopardy. Garrett has gone to the playoffs three times in nine seasons, but has never gotten past the divisional round.
“I’m going to be very trite. I was a lot happier with what he had done the first three games than what’s happened the last three games,” Jones said, “but the big thing I want to say is it’s not just him. This is across the board. That had a lot of input out there tonight to get in that spot.”
Garrett is in the last year of his contract and Jones has shown no inclination to change that. Told last week that oddsmakers ranked Garrett behind only Atlanta’s Dan Quinn on the list of coaches likely to be fired, Jones replied, “Don’t bet any money [on] that happening. You’ll lose it.”
The Cowboys’ offense has been slowed by injuries on its vaunted offensive line, among other things. Their record is the same was it was last year after six games, but expectations were higher this season.
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“If you really look at it, you can’t take one thing. It can be a list of 15 things, with some having more of an emphasis on maybe the player, the execution, mistakes, breaks — all of those kinds of things,” Jones said. “Across the board, we did not play well enough to win. Had we been able to tie this thing up, or win that thing at the end, it wouldn’t be because we played well. You guys would be writing about a team that did not play well that won a game. Instead, you’re [writing] about a team that what usually happens to you when you don’t play well.
“Am I thinking that this is what we are going to be or what we can do with our 10 games that we have remaining, here we are leading the NFC East? Not at all. I want to look at the things that we’re doing right, and we’ll give a good look at making the adjustments or whatever the things that haven’t gone good here.”
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