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FRISCO, Texas — Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones said Friday a win over the 7-1 San Francisco 49ers could change the direction of a 4-5 season.
Jones made the comments during his weekly appearance on 105.3 The Fan’s K&C Masterpiece, two days before San Francisco visits AT&T Stadium. Dallas beat the Indianapolis Colts 27-23 on Nov. 8, a week after losing 33-30 in overtime to the Arizona Cardinals.
Beating San Francisco would give Dallas energy going forward, and Jones expects this team to play to its competition.
“Yes, I certainly do. Yes, I think that’s kind of what I’ve been alluding to this whole time with you this morning,” Jones said. “It could be dramatic.”
“We should play to our competition. I expect this bunch to do it, but if we should do it successfully, there’s no question it would provide energy as we go forward,” Jones continued.
Dallas has lost five of its nine games, and Jones tied the stretch to lessons he has taken from hard times in his own life.
“Most of any character building, most of anything that have really contributed to something good in my life, have come about not through good times but adverse times, and it’s building on learning those lessons in adverse times,” Jones explained. “Well, we have certainly given everybody a big dose of adverse times this year. We’ve been in the foxhole, been shot at and hit. Let’s come out of here and do something that could reverse this against a great team.”
Jones said he is thankful Dallas still has “a breath of potential” to get into the race.
“A lot of people would say, ‘Boy, that’s a bad draw to be playing San Francisco now this Sunday.’ It’s not. It’s important that we have a game like this,” Jones said.
Jerry Jones Points To Arkansas’ 1964 Season
Watching struggling teams win games was probably the inspiration for his call into the show, Jones said, and he recalled his own senior season at Arkansas.
“I’ve seen teams win games that were struggling, and then all of a sudden that became the underpinning and the energy that caused the team to go from a pretender to a contender, so to speak,” Jones said. “My senior year in college, we struggled, and we played Texas, and we struggled to win our early games.”
“They went for two and dropped the ball. We weren’t scored on again. We won the national championship. We were undefeated. It changed us completely,” Jones continued. “The year before, the same bunch, we had one person make the Southwest Conference, one player. That year we had 20. So the players even take on a different glow when you’re winning.”
Jones On Winning, Confidence, And Michael Irvin
The Cowboys’ Super Bowl teams of the 1990s played with an attitude a host described as cockiness, and Jones said both coaches and players produce it.
“I think both, but I think both need to be winning to have it,” Jones said. “It is quite a challenge when you’re not performing individually or you’re not performing as a team well enough to be boastful. But there is no doubt; it’s proven that when you’re winning, you feel emboldened individually as well as the team.”
“It puts wind beneath your wings. It does it for coaching. It does it for all of us,” Jones continued. “I just have a little more confidence when I’m coming off of something that worked.”
Michael Irvin played 12 seasons for Dallas from 1988 to 1999, won three Super Bowls, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007. Irvin’s “skill of motivating people around him even overshadowed his athletic ability,” Jones said.
“He was outstanding athletically, but he was so strong at motivating people around him, and he was so active,” Jones continued.
“He would work on situations months before he was in the huddle with them, and he would be there for them in tough times, maybe. But in the huddle, he’d look over and said, ‘Have I ever let you down? Don’t let me down on this play. Let’s go,’” Jones added. “But he was thinking ahead around the corner. That’s the kind of leader he is and was.”
Dallas hosts San Francisco at 3:25 p.m. CT on Sunday at AT&T Stadium. The game airs on Fox.
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