Cowboys owner Jerry Jones admitted Dallas’ season is “in trouble” after Sunday’s 47-9 home loss to the Detroit Lions. What he won’t admit — at least not publicly — is that he’s considering a coaching change.
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Jones asked local Fox sports anchor Jeff Kolb. “Will you?”
Jones, who turned 82 on Sunday, barely defended head coach Mike McCarthy amid a disappointing 3-3 start. In one breath he denied that McCarthy’s job is in jeopardy (“I don’t think so, so you’re clear”), but in the next, Jones admitted he wouldn’t tell the media if he were.
“Well, I’m not going to mortgage you on what I consider coaching change in light of the timing we’re in here, I’m not doing that at all,” the gruff Jones told Kolb.
Jones has fired a coach only once during the season since 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 by Jason Garrett. someone who had groomed Jones to take over as head coach.
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Jerry Jones asked local Fox sports anchor Jeff Kolb
Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy, left, and quarterback Dak Prescott
But Jones has been criticized by both Garrett, who was fired after the 2019 campaign, and his replacement, McCarthy, 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 be eliminated early in the postseason.
Now, at 3-3, the Cowboys are winless at home and coming off their worst home loss of the Jones era.
“This was very concerning, and it humbled me, and I felt bad for all of our great fans, and especially the ones in the stadium, and certainly the ones that are all about the Cowboys,” said Jones, the only owner who speaks regularly journalists after Sunday’s defeat. “So we have a lot of work to do.”
Luckily 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 this bye week is coming,” Jones said. “It gives everyone a chance to get out there and actually practice. Practice what you need to be more successful than a game like this. This was a shock.”
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The vague scoreboard did not go unnoticed, as many fans mocked the team online
Jones’ shame didn’t end there.
In a social media post intended to crow about the 93,644 fans in attendance at AT&T Stadium, the Cowboys curiously appeared to blur the score on the team’s famous oversized jumbotron. Naturally, fans thought he was personally involved in this decision.
“Did Jerry Jones hire a scoreboard blur technician?” asked a fan on X.
“Why is the scoreboard censored?” another fan wondered, to which one respondent joked, “[It’s] not safe for children.’
And many others pointed out that while the crowd on Sunday was impressively large, it only added more people to watch an extremely disappointing Cowboys team.
“93,000 disappointed people,” one fan commented.