Cowboys owner Jerry Jones admitted Dallas’ season is ‘in the crapper’ after Sunday’s 47-9 home loss to the Detroit Lions. What he won’t concede – at least not publicly – is that he’s considering a coaching change.
‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ Jones asked local Fox affiliate sports anchor Jeff Kolb. ‘Do you?’
Jones, who turned 82 on Sunday, was hardly defending head coach Mike McCarthy amid a disappointing 3-3 start. In one breath he denied McCarthy’s job is in jeopardy (‘I’m not considering that, so you’re clear’), but in the next, Jones admitted he wouldn’t tell the media if it were.
‘Well, I’m not gonna hypothetical with you about what I consider coaching change in light of the timing we’re sitting here with, I’m not at all,’ the surly Jones told Kolb.
Jones has fired a coach during the season only once since famously replacing the legendary Tom Landry with Jimmy Johnson when he bought the Cowboys in 1989. In that case, Wade Philips was fired after a 1-7 start in 2010 and replaced with Jason Garrett – someone who Jones had been grooming to take over as head coach.
Jerry Jones was all smiles before the game, while accepting birthday greetings from friends
Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy, left, and quarterback Dak Prescott
But with both Garrett, who was fired after the 2019 campaign, and his replacement, McCarthy, Jones has been criticized for his reluctance to make coaching changes. In the case of McCarthy – a former Super Bowl winner in Green Bay – the Cowboys have gone 12-5 for three consecutive years only to suffer an early postseason ouster.
Now, at 3-3, the Cowboys are winless at home and coming off their worst home defeat of the Jones era.
‘This was very concerning, and it was very humbling, and I felt bad because of all of our great fans, and especially the ones at the stadium, and certainly the ones that are all about the Cowboys,’ Jones, the only owner who regularly speaks to reporters, said after Sunday’s loss. ‘So we’ve got a lot of work to do.’
Fortunately for the Cowboys, they get a week off before returning to face the San Francisco 49ers on October 27 in Santa Clara.
‘I’m glad we got this bye week coming up here,’ Jones said. ‘It’ll give everybody an opportunity to get out and actually practice. Practice what it is that takes you to be more successful than a game like this. This was a shocker.’
In an X post crowing about the 93,644 fans in attendance at AT&T Stadium, the Cowboys curiously appeared to blur out the score on the team’s famously oversized jumbotron
The blurred scoreboard did not go unnoticed as many fans mocked the team online
Jones’ embarrassment didn’t end there.
In a social media post aimed at crowing about the 93,644 fans in attendance at AT&T Stadium, the Cowboys curiously appeared to blur out the score on the team’s famously oversized jumbotron. Naturally fans figured he was personally involved in this decision.
‘Did Jerry Jones hire a scoreboard blur technician?’ one fan asked on X.
‘Why is the scoreboard censored?’ another fan wondered, to which one respondent quipped: ‘[It’s] not safe for kids.’
And many others pointed out that while Sunday’s crowd was impressive in size, that’s just more people watching an utterly disappointing Cowboys team.
’93K disappointed people,’ one fan remarked.