Cowboys at bye: Super Bowl goal intact, no trades, Jason Garrett has to take next step
According to vice president Stephen Jones, the Dallas Cowboys (4-3) are heading into the bye week with all of their preseason goals and mandates still intact.
The season-saving 37-10 destruction of the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, which ended a three-game losing streak, only reinforced what they already knew about this team. They have the players in place to compete for a Super Bowl for the first time since 1995.
“Absolutely, we feel real good about this team,” Jones said.
Owner Jerry Jones was even more emphatic about the boost the win against the Eagles gave the Cowboys heading into the second half of the season.
“We sure needed to get out here as a team, as an organization, we need to basically I’d say demonstrate to our fans, to ourselves and to everybody that we’re capable of playing a team like the Eagles,” Jerry Jones said.
“We have a lot of respect for Philadelphia. This is not only a feel-good win, but it’s one that we can sure go from here positively. This was a confidence-builder for me on our team, this game. It is.”
And the charge for coach Jason Garrett to return in 2020 is to “take the next step” toward getting them there. Garrett is in the final year of his contract and is coaching for his job.
The Cowboys, who are in first place in the NFC East, have won three division titles and two wild card playoff games under Garrett. But they have never advanced to the NFC title game, let alone the Super Bowl.
And if the Cowboys are going to do it, they will do so largely with the same team they opened the season with.
The scenario is unlike last season when the bye-week trade with the Oakland Raiders for receiver Amari Cooper spurred the Cowboys to a 10-6 finish and the NFC East title after a 3-4 start.
There are no team-altering or season-sparking trades on the table before next week’s trade deadline.
“I think probably knowing what we had at this time last year,” Jerry Jones said. “We had an idea we might be getting to talk about Amari. ... Matter of fact, probably not even in the same universe as the likelihood we would do something like Amari or frankly anything close to that.”
And none are necessary, Stephen Jones said.
Jones, who has already described this team as the deepest and most talented group since the Super Bowl title teams of the 1990s, said the Cowboys still yearn for a playmaker at safety but that’s been the case for a few years.
His only worry is depth at defensive end behind starters Robert Quinn and DeMarcus Lawrence.
Jones said the team doesn’t expect defensive end Randy Gregory to play this season as he has yet to file for reinstatement from his indefinite suspension.
But he said Quinn, who leads the team with six sacks, is better than they anticipated.
“We felt like he could play,” Jones said. “We were expecting to have a Randy Gregory plus player because he is a veteran with skins on the wall and we thought he would be good in Rod Marinelli’s system. We were hoping he would be a double-digit sack guy. But he is even better than we hoped.”
Stephen Jones said the Cowboys have the talent to play with anyone when healthy.
He believes the Cowboys will be healthy when they return after the bye to play the New York Giants (2-5) on Nov. 4 to start the second half of the season.
But said for them to become a championship-caliber team, they must become more resilient to survive a grueling upcoming schedule that includes the Patriots (7-0), Bears (3-3), Lions (2-3-1) and Eagles (3-4) on the road as well as the Vikings (5-2), Bills (5-1), Rams (4-3) and Redskins (1-6) at home.
All four of the Cowboys wins have been double-digit affairs but their they have come up short in the fourth quarter of all three losses.
“Our team has to be better in overcoming adversity, overcoming injuries and slow starts,” Stephen Jones said. “Don’t settle for field goals. Convert drives into touchdowns. When don’t start fast we struggle. That has been our Achilles heel.
“This is going to be a tough stretch. We are going to be in dogfights. We are going to have to be able to win those. We feel good about this team. But being able to close out is going to be big. We have to find the right formula to win the tight ones.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
