Now-angry Dallas Cowboys get chippy with each other at practice. But will it matter?
First came the embarrassing loss to the Buffalo Bills on Thanksgiving Day.
Then came defensive tackle Michael Bennett cursing and screaming at his teammates in the postgame locker room, followed by tears from owner Jerry Jones and talk of a dream finish.
Now, the Dallas Cowboys are angry and mad, so much so that things got chippy in practice Sunday as they began preparations for Thursday’s battle against the Chicago Bears.
Amazingly, the Cowboys (6-6) still lead in the NFC East and control their own destiny, despite a two-game losing streak, because the Philadelphia Eagles continued to struggle as well with a 37-31 loss to the Miami Dolphins (3-9) on Sunday.
But the Cowboys’ frustrations are about their own poor play — about losing six of their past nine games after a 3-0 start to the season.
“Yeah, angry. Angry we’re not where we expected ourselves to be,” Elliott said. “Just angry that things haven’t been going the way we want them to go. We’ve got to channel that the right way. Come in like we did today, go to work and trust the process, go out there and play better football.”
Elliott said that anger spilled on the practice field with some trash talking and chippy play.
“Practice was good,” Elliott said. “Great energy. Guys were on their stuff. Guys had a little stuff in their neck. It was a little chippy. Ready to go.”
Chippy, angry at practice?
“Yeah, that’s what you expect,” Elliott said. ““That’s the type of team we are; that’s how we’re built. We’ve just got to figure out a way to go out there and play better.”
“No confidence loss. We know, in this locker room, what we need to do, Elliott added. “We need to go out there and play better football. We need to go out there and execute better. It’s been the same story all year. We’ve just got to figure it out.
With four games to go in the season, Elliott said time is running out on the Cowboys to figure it out and play better.
“I mean, we need to start to get this going now,” Elliott said. “Not many games left. It’s really crunch time now. We’ve got to win some ballgames. What I do know is we’ve got to go out there and play better.
That was essentially the message from Bennett, who came over in a trade from the New England Patriots during the bye week but was the one stepping up and saying what the longtime Cowboys were thinking.
“We’re better than we’ve been,” Elliott said of Bennett’s message. ‘We’ve got the right group of guys in the locker room. We’ve just got to put that on the table. He said something we were all thinking. It was good to hear from him. We’ve just got to apply it.”
Elliott said had no answers on how the Cowboys will apply it.
He just knows they haven’t been playing well and haven’t lived up to their own expectations, let alone those of everyone else.
“We just haven’t played good football,” Elliott said. “I mean, that’s all it comes down to. Everyone wants to try to find out what’s wrong. I’ll tell you what’s wrong. We just haven’t played good football. We haven’t gone out there and executed as a team. Until we do that, it’s going to be tough to win ballgames.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2019 at 5:39 PM.
