Jason Garrett’s response to Cowboys’ Indy thud differs from players
To a man, Dallas Cowboys players shared the same sentiment in the locker room Sunday afternoon.
After the Indianapolis Colts pasted them with a 23-0 loss, players from Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott to Jaylon Smith and Byron Jones took turns telling the media that the loss could serve as something as a wake-up call.
In short, they said, it could be good for them. The Cowboys (8-6) can still clinch the NFC East title with a win at noon Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5-9) at AT&T Stadium. If they lose to the Bucs, ahem, and the Eagles and Redskins win again this week, they’ll be forced to beat the New York Giants (5-9) at MetLife Stadium in the Dec. 30 season finale or take a chance of blowing the division needing to win just one of their final three games.
Head coach Jason Garrett on Monday shot that down and seemed more annoyed with his team than at any point this season, even during its 3-5 start. For him, the loss was about a lack of execution, not lack of edge.
“I don’t really agree with that assessment. We didn’t do what we needed to do as a team to win the game,” Garrett said, before respectfully assigning all due respect to the game the Colts played. “They played very well in all three phases. We didn’t play well enough. We didn’t earn the right to win that game and we have to live with that, we have to learn from that. I think that’s the biggest thing. You have to learn from the experiences you have, both good and bad.”
During their five-game win streak, the Cowboys handled the ups and downs of each game with the kind of ease you see with a championship-level team. On Sunday in Indy, their youth showed for the first time in a month. A botched field goal and a dropped touchdown pass sucked all of the momentum away and when the Colts scored on their opening possession of the second half to take a 17-0 lead.
“I think the best thing we’ve done here over the last five weeks is we understand the challenges of the game and I think we’ve been mentally tough over the course of these last five games where we’ve handled the success of the game, we’ve handled the adversity of the game, and we kept playing,” he said. “I think that has been a strength, or become a strength, of this team. We just didn’t do what we needed to do to win the game [Sunday]. Period. Whatever success we had, we didn’t build on it. Whatever adversity we had, we didn’t handle it in any phase of our team and ultimately didn’t do what we needed to do to win the game. It’s really as simple as that.”
Garrett’s assessment is simple: If a couple of plays are executed it’s an entirely different game. He compared the his team’s response to adversity to the loss to the Titans on Monday night on Nov. 5. So did Cowboys vice president Stephen Jones on KRDL/105.3 The Fan.
“We came out there and we did everything the right way except score points against the Colts in the first half. We held the ball 20 minutes. I think we were right at 180 yards of total offense and we didn’t score,” Jones said. “They reversed it on us. They held it 20 and moved the ball against our defense pretty much at ease there, and then we didn’t execute at all in the second half.”
The lack of execution is most glaring in the red zone, a problem that has persisted the entire season, even during Dallas’ winning streak. Only the San Francisco 49ers (4-9) are worse at scoring touchdowns in the red zone. The Cowboys get in the end zone on 44.2 percent of the time and are scoring 19.7 points a game. Of the six offenses scoring fewer points than the Cowboys, only Tennessee has a winning record.
“That’s been our issue all year,” Jones said. “Obviously, right now we’re not converting time of possession and yardage into points and we’ve got to get that done. I think we can. I think we’ve got the players. I think we can do this ... but so far this year we just haven’t been that efficient in converting our yards and time of possession into points.”