FRISCO, Texas — Jerry Jones said Tuesday there is no explanation for the end of Sunday’s loss to the Baltimore Ravens that he or his coaches are satisfied with, and that the Dallas Cowboys are evaluating how not to make the same mistakes again.
The Cowboys owner and general manager made his weekly appearance on the Shan and RJ show on 105.3 The Fan two days after a 34-31 loss at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Tyler Loop made a 56-yard field goal as time expired. Dallas fell to 1-2, and Baltimore improved to 2-1.
A pass interference penalty on the Ravens gave the Cowboys first-and-goal at the Baltimore 2 in the final half-minute. Dak Prescott threw incomplete to George Pickens on first down, and a false start moved Dallas back to the 7. Prescott scrambled 2 yards on second down, and Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer called the team’s last timeout with 14 seconds left. On third-and-goal from the 5, Prescott threw the ball away.
Jones said the Cowboys made mistakes during that stretch and that the coaches are studying it with the intention of doing it differently next time.
“There is no explanation you’re satisfied with,” Jones said. “None. Let’s be sure that we all understand that. They don’t have one that they’re satisfied with. We made mistakes during that time. There’s no question about it. So there is no explanation, but there’s an evaluation of how not to make the same mistakes again, which is what you should be doing.”
“You can’t get that back,” Jones continued. “No way to get it back. What you can do is use it, and if there’s any aspect of it that you want to just not even think happened, use it to get better, and that’s what’s being done. But the aspect of sitting here trying to change what happened on that field in Brazil, as we all know, is impossible. But it is possible to learn from it. And I’m going to assure you right now, they are analyzing it with the intention of learning from it, how to do it differently next time and come out there with a win.”
Schottenheimer said after the game that the Cowboys called a quick out on third down and that he probably overcoached Prescott, because with no timeouts left the ball had to go to Pickens or be thrown away. Brandon Aubrey made a 23-yard field goal on the next play to tie the game with 7 seconds remaining.
Jerry Jones On Timeouts, Headsets, And The Decision Process
The Cowboys landed after an overnight flight and spent Monday going over the things fans would expect, Jones said. Nobody on the Dallas side expected Baltimore to have enough time on the clock to get into scoring range once the Cowboys reached the goal line with seconds left.
“There’s not a way in the world to discuss them, but all the obvious things,” Jones explained. “We have our very best players, our very best situation that you can have on the field ready to ostensibly win the game. No one would have thought that they would have enough time on the clock to basically get a score that would get it done because we were anticipating there early when we got, I’m speaking of now, on the goal line with just a matter of seconds.”
“We all have gone over completely the use of timeouts during that time, the use of timeouts before we got down there when we were over on defense,” Jones continued. “So we’ve carefully gone over those kinds of things, where your input’s coming from, where you are on your headsets, how you get your information down, how you evolve into making that decision. Those are the kinds of things that are being gone over ad nauseam so that you can look to do it better when you’ve got a situation similar to that in the future.”
Baltimore called a timeout of its own with 28 seconds left, before the pass interference penalty put Dallas at the 2.
Brian Schottenheimer Has Had Hours To Reflect, Jerry Jones Says
Jones took issue with the idea that Schottenheimer feels differently about the loss now than he did Sunday night. The coach has spent the hours since communicating with everyone involved in the decisions made in that stretch.
“I don’t know that you would inject ‘differently’ in the sentence, but he certainly has had hours, if you will, to reflect and communicate with everybody involved in the decisions that were going on at that time,” Jones said. “And so that’s what you should be doing. You candidly were in such a good position to win that game. You had earned that position because of how well you had played on the previous set of downs relative to Baltimore having the ball. And so we made the stop. We had come back. Really were proud of the way the guys came back, especially those defensive stands that we made.”
“And then you get in that situation, and this is a textbook,” Jones continued. “One thing about the game is that it gives you a lot of issues or a lot of time because then you don’t have the seconds ticking away on the clock. You can spend minutes or hours looking at every point, doing what most fans would think we should be doing right now, analyzing every aspect of where we were with those circumstances. That’s what we’re doing. And we do that in light of the fact that coming up here Sunday, we’ve got a big game down in Houston and an opportunity to take the good parts of what we’ve been about in these first games, take those good parts and put them to use to beat a good Houston team.”
Dallas rallied from a 24-13 deficit to lead 28-24 before Baltimore went back ahead 31-28 in the final two minutes. Schottenheimer is in his second season as Cowboys coach.
The Cowboys visit the Houston Texans on Sunday at Reliant Stadium. Kickoff is set for noon CT on FOX. Houston is 0-3.
