Jerry Jones reacts to Cowboys’ frustrating loss to Vikings
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones still thinks he has one of the “top teams” in the league after it dropped to 5-4 with a 28-24 loss to the Minnesota Vikings Sunday night at AT&T Stadium.
He praised head coach Mike Zimmer and the Vikings’ game plan, declined to comment on the Cowboys’ play-calling near the end zone late and his concerns about making the playoffs.
Here are Jones’ comments after the game via the transcription service provided by the Cowboys:
Thoughts on the game:
“I want to give Minnesota, [head coach] Mike Zimmer and their organization a lot of credit. They came out here tonight and they physically took it to us. We had a difficult time getting them off the field in terms of their offense, but to our credit, I was really impressed with how we came back in there and got back to where we could win a ball game that was really in doubt. It was really disappointing. I’m disappointed for these guys in here and disappointed for our coaches, but I can’t say enough about how Zimmer coached them up.”
On the lack of a running game:
“Well I give Mike Zimmer and his staff a lot of credit. You basically could’ve put a sign on the start of the game that said, ‘Zeke’s not going anywhere,’ and that was the story of the game. He designed a plan to win the game that way. We had trouble getting them off the field at times, and that limited us. I thought Dak was outstanding. Cooper was outstanding tonight. And I thought our protection was really impressive here tonight. All of that gave us a change to see some guys do some good things, but they are a good football team and you can lose those kinds of games just like we lost.”
On the play calls in the final red zone possession:
“I’m not going to get into that since it didn’t work. We’d all like to have that back, but you’ve gotta keep trying. And again, like you said, you have it down there and to their credit, they had it down to where you have to make it and they got the ball game. But they were in position all night long to win that game. We had to come back and get up there to where we had a shot all day long. And so, at the end of the day I haven’t look at the total on the stats, but I know this from the standpoint of the plan, it seems like they were able to move the ball more assuredly than I would’ve expected.”
On broken tackles:
“I just think that we can give [Dalvin Cook] a lot of the credit for those missed tackles. Those are some good linebackers bouncing off him and making some of those plays. But all in all, they had a good game plan. They did their screens, did routes out of the backfield and got him the ball really well. And again, I thought they came in with a good plan that won the day for them. We have a top team, and this is one that we’re going to have to get over it. We’re sitting here tied with Philadelphia at the top of the division now. We’re going to have to play these kinds of games to get where we want to be this year. We just played a well-coached team. We played a good personnel team, and their quarterback had a good night. He didn’t have as good a night as our quarterback, but he won.”
On a setback in the standings:
“Well, we know that Philadelphia is coming, and we know the caliber of the players that we are playing. And so, form the standpoint of numbers, this was a big game for us and its going to make it that much harder to get where we want to go. But make no mistake about it, Zimmer and the Vikings had everything to say about this tonight.”
On being concerned after the loss:
”I’m concerned just because we played a good team tonight. It would’ve been a big win for us, even though we are at home. It would’ve been big for us to get this win, and especially to come back and do it with a lot of good performances like we had tonight. But we were short, and that means we have a bigger challenge now for these next seven ball games.”
On physical play:
“Well I was impressed with how they were able to run the ball. We know you have to be physical to get that done, and I thought they did a really good job of getting their runners out in space. I was very impressed, and as we all know running the ball and being physical takes a lot out of the opposing team. But for our team to stay and fight and come back and compete the way they did impressed me with our team. But all of that stuff isn’t as important as the win. I’m sad that we didn’t get the win, we’ve challenged ourselves here.”
On making the playoffs:
“Its early for me to say that [winning the division] is the only way, but you know you have to play teams like Minnesota. We’ve got some teams coming up that get out there and compete with Minnesota as you know between Chicago and Detroit. It’s a different makeup, but the same kind of challenges. And we’ve got to go on the road to do some of those, and so this was one that we would have liked to win for all of those reasons.”
