Jerry Jones voiced his opinion on Dallas’ OT punt. But what about the players?
The owner and general manager may have let his true feelings fly in a moment of post-game candor but no Dallas Cowboys’ player has second-guessed head coach Jason Garrett.
Garrett’s decision to punt on 4th and 1 from the Houston Texans’ 42 in overtime Sunday showed a lot of faith in his defense to stop Houston. The flip side of that coin is he wasn’t showing much faith in his offense, perhaps for good reason. In fact, Garrett has candidly said that’s exactly his line of thinking when he punted the ball away. Jerry Jones said it was time to take a chance.
No players, however, interviewed since Sunday night has publicly questioned Garrett’s call.
Guard Zack Martin was disappointed in the offense’s overall performance and said if it had played better earlier in the game it wouldn’t have reached overtime.
“That’s the coaches decision,” Martin said. “We watched the film and there are a lot of shoulda woulda’s that if we could have done, but at the the end of the day, if we had executed earlier on it wouldn’t have been close. Our defense played their butts off and put us in a position to win and we just need to do a better job offensively.”
Rookie receiver Michael Gallup said he was ready to go for it.
“I think everybody should be ready for that. I was prepared for that,” he said. “I do what my coach says.”
One of Garrett’s main reasons for electing to punt was seeing Ezekiel Elliott being stuffed at the line of scrimmage on 3rd and 1. Martin said if the offensive line had executed on that play there would have been no fourth down decision.
“We have to block our guys and get the yard we need to move the chains,” he said, deciding not to elaborate on what went wrong on third down. “Obviously, we have to make plays in certain situations. We have to play better on the road. That’s kind of been our Achilles’ Heel. We’re going to need to fix that. Our lack of communication on the road … that’s something we have to fix.”
Martin said there’s no excuses anymore for the offense to be confused or have communication issues, which has been something multiple players have acknowledged through the first five weeks. It doesn’t matter, Martin said, that three of the main wide receivers are in their first year with the Cowboys, or that rookie Connor Williams is starting at left guard, or Joe Looney is starting for the first time in his career in place of All-Pro center Travis Frederick.
“There’s no excuse for it. We’re five weeks into the season. Connor has been in there since Day 1. Joe has been in there for seven weeks,” he said. “The season is still early. We have a long way to go. We know how this thing works. You can’t dwell on the past. This game is over. It’s on to Jacksonville. We just have to do everything we can to get a win this week.”