ARLINGTON – The players could wait. The Cowboys’ locker room wasn’t yet open for visitors.
Instead, unique among his NFL peers, owner Jerry Jones emerged from his team’s postgame sanctuary and was immediately enveloped by the biding media.
This is Jones’ weekly ritual. This is how he likes things. Most NFL owners are virtually invisible on game days, save for the random fuzzy TV shot of the owner’s suite.
But Owner Jones seems to feel the need to give the 10 o’clock news guys something to work with. Thus, he alights from the locker room, waits for the spotlights to come to life, and then wears the cameras and gathered reporters on his arms the way a rich woman wears her furs.
Jerry, to be sure, did not disappoint after his team’s 24-22 wild card victory Saturday night over the Seattle Seahawks. He tossed the usual hosannas towards quarterback Dak Prescott and coach Jason Garrett. He rightly praised the Cowboys defense.
And in signature Jerry-speak, he turned a question about his team’s season journey into a parable about burning covered wagons floating down the Mississippi on their way to California.
Wait, what?
Here’s Jones’ whole remark:
“You’re going to have times when you’re going to have to reinvent the wheel during a season. It’s like the old wagon train. We’re going to burn some of these wagons on the way to California, break them down and float the Mississippi River.
“A lot of people are going to die. But I’m going to make it to California. I hope you’re on the train with me. That’s kind of the way you look at a football team. We’ve got a lot of guys that can make it to California, I think.”
It’s his team, of course. He doesn’t have to use Google Maps.
Jones, though, had every reason to enjoy Saturday night. A season-ending defeat would have been devastating, perhaps to Garrett, and certainly to an owner who is 76 years old and has been trying to coax the genie out of the bottle for the past 23 seasons.
At 76, frankly, he doesn’t have any do-overs left. Despite his incomplete resume’, Garrett is the Cowboys’ Coach for Life. Not for his life – but Jerry’s. Same with Prescott, the likely last quarterback that Jones wants to have to find.
That’s how significant Saturday night was. The season’s journey — from nowhere to wherever, perhaps California — needed validation.
Much praise will be showered upon Prescott, and deservedly so. But this is a team that has defined itself by its defense.
The Seahawks were held to 73 rushing yards and 11 first downs. This was a Seattle team that ran for 273 against the Rams a few weeks ago and 210 against the Chiefs.
“We ran and hit,” said Cowboys defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence. “You hit the will out of somebody, and they ain’t gonna want to run no more. We were laying that wood today.”
Whether the same kind of mahogany-laying can be mustered against the Rams or Saints next week remains to be seen.
All of a sudden, this team’s best athletes seem to be on defense. They aren’t doing it with smoke and mirrors. Coordinator Rod Marinelli wasn’t dialing up blitzes all night Saturday or offering bounties. The game was five minutes into the second quarter before Seattle was able to get its initial first down.
“They did a fantastic job tonight, particularly early in the game,” Garrett said. “Getting those three and outs early are so big.
“We talked earlier about stopping the run, such a big part of playing good defense. They did make a couple of plays in the passing game, but for the most part the defense gave us a hell of a chance to win this ball game.”
The Cowboys’ looming problem is that all of the remaining NFC playoff teams brandish a certain level of competency on defense. Prescott and the Cowboys offense are going to have to find a way to score more touchdowns, not field goals, against the Rams in LA or Saints in the Superdome.
Los Angeles was first in the NFC in points scored this season. New Orleans was second. The Cowboys were 22nd in the NFL, averaging more than 10 points less per game than the Rams and Saints.
The Cowboys’ season point differential (plus-15) is also the lowest of all remaining playoff teams.
But that’s next week’s story. Saturday night was about validation. And burning wagons. And lifting clouds that had followed this Cowboys team, even through the November and December winning.
The Garrett question came up quickly in Jones’ postgame media assembly.
“This win against a very credible Seattle team will make people think more highly of Jason,” the owner said. “Look around at all the teams searching for red October and trying to find themselves a coach right now. We’ve got one that has a lot of experience on our dime over the last several years. I’d like to use it.”
Someone followed with a query about whether Owner Jones feels “vindicated” by Garrett’s season success.
“I do,” Jerry said. “It’s a feeling that I’m proud for him. I know how hard he works. He’s right there with the hardest working coach that we’ve had. That’s supposed to pay off.
“A lot of his fingerprints are on this team. I’m glad he’s having success as a head coach.”
In the days before the wild card game, many in the national media openly speculated about the effect on Garrett a Cowboys defeat would be. Most of the local media, however, having observed how stubbornly Jerry’s boots are dug in, felt only a blowout loss would put Garrett’s job security back under discussion.
The same likely holds true for next week.
After all, Garrett has won once (2014) in the postseason before. He remains the red-haired beneficiary of the franchise’s lowered expectations. It’s been 23 years (1995) since the Cowboys last won two games in the same postseason.
Now it’s all about just fingerprints and burning wagons. It’s about rowing down the Mississippi on the way to California.
It’s about a season that can only be explained by one of Jerry’s run-on sentences, rendered in the spotlight of his 76th year.
The wagon train rolls on.
