In-season coaching changes are a thing of the past for the Dallas Cowboys, owner Jerry Jones said.
“You don’t need to worry about anybody in that locker room giving everything they’ve got and more and how bad they feel when they get beat on a play or get beat in a quarter or the whole game, at all,” Jones said Monday following the Cowboys’ seventh loss of the season. “I don’t ever worry about that.”
Jones said he regrets pulling the plug too soon on head coaches in the past, including firing Wade Phillips after a 1-7 start in 2010.
“I’ve regretted that. That’s the music I’m listening to,” Jones said.
There are no plans for an in-season move involving head coach Mike McCarthy in Dallas, where the Cowboys (3-7) are winless at home by a league-worst margin of minus-118.
McCarthy said “it’s frustrating for everybody” to accumulate losses, but he knows the only thing that might save his job when his contract runs out in January is ending the season with a string of wins.
“There is good coming out of this,” McCarthy said Monday night. “You don’t see it because we’re not winning games, but there’s young men that are getting an opportunity to do more and I do believe it’ll pay forward. It needs to hurry the hell up, because we need it in six days.”
The Cowboys went 12-5 last season and discussed a path to the Super Bowl throughout the offseason. Expectations did not match the current reality.
Jones said he’s counting on the Cowboys sticking together through what he described as tough times, similar to Dallas going 1-15 his first year as owner in 1989.
“And we’ve had other tough years. And this one, we didn’t anticipate the record. And the way we’re playing right now, we wouldn’t have anticipated that,” Jones said. “But, not, this isn’t — y’all have heard me tell these old stories until you’re sick — but not, you stay in this league long enough, you’ll have times like this.”
Jones, of course, could change his mind with the Cowboys in the midst of three games in 11 days. Their 34-10 loss in primetime to the Texans on Monday night was the third consecutive home loss by a margin of at least three touchdowns. The Cowboys also suffered a 34-6 loss to the NFC East-leading Eagles and began their current five-game losing streak with a 47-9 spanking at the hands of the Detroit Lions.
Dallas has a quick turnaround for Week 12 against former defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, who quickly righted the ship with the Washington Commanders (7-4).
“This is it, man. We got seven losses. We’ve got to go. Backs against the wall. We got to fight, scratch and claw. We’ve got to do everything we can to go win the next game,” McCarthy said. “That’s where my mind’s at. That’s what I’m going to coach and that’s the expectation. We’ve got to win.”
The Cowboys are in the spotlight for their traditional Thanksgiving Day game in what is set up as a matchup of backup quarterbacks — Cooper Rush for Dallas and Tommy DeVito for the New York Giants — and play again on “Monday Night Football” 11 days later against Cincinnati.
