Jerry Jones second-guesses Jason Garrett on overtime punt

Dallas Cowboys’ owner and general manager Jerry Jones said he wasn’t second-guessing head coach Jason Garrett but that’s what came out of his mouth.

After the Cowboys fell to the Houston Texans 19-16 in overtime, Jones expressed disappointment that Garrett elected to punt on 4th and 1 from the Texans’ 42-yard line in overtime.

“It’s time for risk at that particular time. That’s not second guessing,” Jones said. “But we’re all extremely disappointed.”

The Texans took the punt and drove 72 yards to kick the game-winning field goal.

A week before, Garrett went for it on 4th and 1 against the Lions and said after the win that “When you have a belief in the guys up front and you can hand the ball to [Ezekiel Elliott] and you feel good about that, that’s really where the decision-making process starts.”

Against the Texans, however, Garrett decided to rely on his defense and hoped to pin Houston with bad field position. The Texans’ game-winning drive indeed started at their own 10 but a 49-yard pass from DeShaun Watson to DeAndre Hopkins put Houston deep into Cowboys’ territory and set up the game-winning field goal.

“We felt like at that point in the game with the way our defense was playing, the idea was to pin them down there,” Garrett said.

Instead, on Hopkins’ big gain, it looked like the Cowboys’ defense was out of gas.

Dallas’ offense had a season-low 14 first downs and finished with fewer than 300 total yards for the third time in five games.

This story was originally published October 8, 2018 at 6:56 AM.