FRISCO – It sounds so dramatic, and maybe inside the big meeting room here at The Star in Frisco, it was, as 81-year-old Jerry Jones took to the stage at the front of the room to address the final undoing of his underperforming Dallas Cowboys.
What was the dual point of the team owner’s presentation?
One was about “America’s Team” and how Super Bowl-level success is being offered here on a silver platter.
“His message was, ‘We gotta win,” veteran Jourdan Lewis said. “It’s the Dallas Cowboys. We had everything to win.”
Jerry talked about how he doesn’t have too many years left in this business,” return man KaVontae Turpin said. “He just wants it bad. He wants a ring bad.”
Jones has three of them, from his trio of 1990’s Super Bowl titles, but while they are not literally dusty, the memory of them clouds just a little bit more with each passing year. The 2023 edition of the Cowboys, led by coach Mike McCarthy and quarterback Dak Prescott, was supposed to be different.
But given their 48-32 playoff ouster at the hands of the upstart Packers – the first time a No. 2 seed has ever lost to a No. 7 – this wasn’t just “not different” ..
It might be the worst loss in franchise history.
And naturally, coach and quarterback are now under fire, with Jones quite obviously contemplating change. The salary cap makes that difficult to do with Prescott. Three straight 12-5 seasons – and support from the locker room – might make it difficult to do with McCarthy.
“His message was we gotta win,” Lewis said. “It’s the Dallas Cowboys. We had everything to win. We can’t let this feeling keep going on, so it makes sense. I just feel like he wants to win right now. The urgency is now. It was always that on our shoulders. He made it clear that that was the point.”
Now, maybe there is one voice (or more) inside the locker room who doesn’t get that. Or maybe that person is trying to be a “helper” in saying what he said about Prescott to our NFL Network friend Jane Slater, who dutifully reported news that is now sort of taking on a life of its own.
We talk about Jerry’s presentation and about that sourced “blockbuster tidbit in the Fish Podcast below and in the Fish Report above. Listen and watch and welcome, Cowboys Nation!
