FRISCO, Texas -- If the tone wasn't obvious Thursday night, let there be no doubt about the frustration within the Cowboys' organization.
"That low, low eerie thing you hear going across Dallas, that's me screaming in my pillow," said Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones. "And, so, the bottom line is you can imagine I'd like to make this better."
Jones gave his regularly scheduled interview with 105.3 FM The Fan in Dallas on Friday morning, no more than 12 hours after he dissected a 31-24 to the Chicago Bears. Between a third-straight loss and the long hours of the travel back to Dallas, that frustration boiled over into a testy exchange with the team's flagship radio station.
"I don't like your attitude. I've been traveling all night and I don't have the patience to jack with you today," he said at the outset, when asked if he was embarrassed by the loss.
Over the course of 20 minutes, Jones touched on a variety of the same topics from Thursday night. Namely, the conversation centered on how the Cowboys can raise their level of play, and how a team with a seemingly talented roster could fall to this state. At one point in the interview, his line was cut off because he swore repeatedly on air.
"We have not played at the level that I thought our personnel would play at when I look back on the entire season," Jones said. "You can take each position group and you can basically evaluate how this, their talent level could have played better."
That extends from an offense that went three-and-out five times, to a defense that allowed Chicago to score on four consecutive possessions. And it would be remiss not to mention special teams, which saw Brett Maher miss a 42-yard field goal and send an errant kickoff out of bounds.
"Well, the main thing is you hope to start with — let's hope that you make some field goals," Jones said. "You get your kicker out there, you have him practice, he's missed 10 this year. I think that's the high for the NFL."
Even still, the hope remains that the Cowboys can turn it around. If anything, perhaps that's what frustrates Jones the most -- that he's seen this roster buckle down and string together wins before, though it has been unable to do so now.
"Because we've seen it, because we know these players, then it's not totally unrealistic to think that we can get them together at the same time when we play the Rams and play better," he said. "If I hadn't seen it, if you hadn't seen them do it and haven't seen them do it in recent times, it would be different."
It all adds up to leave the Cowboys exactly where they've been for much of the season -- searching for answers, but unable to find them. And while Jones said he'd be concerned if he felt apathy from the fanbase, the response to the last three games has been anything but apathetic.
"Oh, I've seen the opposite. I'm seeing a hell of a frustration from the fans. And I'm seeing it from everybody involved here," he said. "But I understand that. I just told you. I would have expected that. And I know good and well there is anybody in the NFL that is more responsible for what's going on out on the field than me. And, so, I certainly have that kind of frustration, as well."
