Jerry Jones 'not in the feel-good mood,' still believes in Andy Dalton after brutal loss to Cardinals
The Dallas Cowboys struggled without Dak Prescott on Monday night.
Dallas, with backup quarterback Andy Dalton taking over after Prescott suffered a season-ending ankle injury on Oct. 11, crawled to a 38-10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals filled with turnovers and mistakes.
Though it wasn’t going great before Prescott went down, team owner Jerry Jones said on 105.3 The Fan on Tuesday that his team looked very different without their star quarterback.
“That was the pretty glaring difference out there last night,” Jones said, via USA Today. “But it doesn’t have to stay that way.”
Nearly everyone seemed to shoulder the blame for the loss, too, including Ezekiel Elliott (two lost fumbles) and Dalton (34-of-54 for 266 yards, one TD and two INTs). Even coach Mike McCarthy said he “didn’t coach very well,” something his players anonymously agreed with later.
Despite the outing, Jones says the team isn’t lost without Prescott.
“We can get the most out of our team and it could be enough with Andy Dalton,” Jones said, via USA Today. “We didn’t last night. He contributed to turnovers early. We had a play that could have been a turnover right off that would’ve been significant. But we can get there with Andy.
“He’s going to be challenged. I wish we had been in better shape protection-wise there, I wish we had a better run game and could get in better field position and better points in the game to work with. When Dak had those things, we did well. Dak was able to take us when we didn’t have those things and keep us in the ball game and get a couple wins.”
NFC East lead no ‘manna from heaven’
While the Cowboys boast just a 2-4 record and are fresh off their worst outing of the year, they are still leading the atrocious NFC East.
That may be a comforting thing for some Dallas fans, but Jones isn’t happy about it.
“When you’re not playing any better than we are, it’s hard for me to basically look at the end game — which is to win the East — and get excited about the fact that we’re better than anybody,” he said, via USA Today. “‘We may be slow but we’re better than you,’ syndrome.
“I’m not in the feel-good mood, frankly, that we’ve got manna from heaven being in the East. We’ve got to get better.”
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