Defiant Jerry Jones says no curtains at AT&T Stadium to block sun

Owner Jerry Jones has heard the complaints of his Dallas Cowboys players about the sun at AT&T Stadium. He has heard criticism from pundits, who laugh at the idea of the $1.2 billion meticulously-built facility being constructed in the wrong direction.

He answered with typical Jones defiance, denial and bravado on his radio show Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan.

First, Jones says, there will be no curtains put up to block out the sun, despite complaints from receivers Dez Bryant and Brice Butler that the light coming in from behind the end zone during late afternoon games bothered them and was the reason for dropped passes in last Sunday’s 28-17 victory against the Kansas City Chiefs.

“I don’t see curtains at all,” Jones said. “We’re good at knowing where that sun is during these games. So, I don’t see that in the future. We played with an 18-inch dropoff at each corner of the end zones at Texas Stadium. And that was quite an advantage. We knew where it was and our opponents didn’t. So we want, rather than having the sun when it’s in there, we want it in the quarterback’s eyes. We want to keep it out of the receiver’s eyes. They’ll get good. They’ll know what part of the field and they’ll know when and we’ll get real good at it. We became really good at playing that 18-inch dropoff on each corner of those end zones.”

The sun is a problem because the stadium was built east-west, rather than north-south like most venues around the league.

Jones said they took that into account it built it that that way anyway.

“Absolutely. We thought about that all the time,” Jones said. “You’ve also got to think about the land and you’ve got to think about the best way to set the stadium. So, there’s nothing that doesn’t have many things to think about as opposed to it. But the sun has not been a factor at all in any win or loss we’ve had in that stadium.”

This story was originally published November 8, 2017 at 10:45 AM with the headline "Defiant Jerry Jones says no curtains at AT&T Stadium to block sun."