ARLINGTON, Texas — One week ago, owner and general manager Jerry Jones was one of the primary decision-makers noting the Dallas Cowboys needed to, and would, improve over their embarrassing loss at the hands of the New Orleans Saints in Week 2. But as they enter a shortened Week 4, the improvements are still in the wind, mostly, having dropped their matchup against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 3.
Things were again getting out of hand when the defense was unable to halt Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, as the offense continued their struggles in the red zone and, overall, figuring out how to score touchdowns — promising drives killed by a list of untimely penalties and a fumble by CeeDee Lamb.
"It just seemed like we couldn't get out of our own way," said Jones. "But it's just a reminder of what this game is about."
The silver lining that exists this week, but was absent seven days prior, lies in how the Cowboys came alive in the fourth quarter in all three phases. They scored three touchdowns, recovered an onside kick and forced Jackson's offense off of the field on third down on multiple occasions.
The late-game push nearly handed the Ravens the biggest NFL collapse of the season, but they needed one more stop to have a chance, and they weren't able to finish their comeback.
Jones is at least seeing the events of the fourth quarter as momentum and confidence that can be built on going forward — considering the Cowboys scored more points in that quarter than in the previous 11 quarters combined.
"They can take some of what they showed out at the end of that game and we can go forward with that," he said. "That's at least some [good] taste in your mouth. We're sad, obviously, for our fans that we've lost two in a row here at home, but if things work like you'd like to have them, they can take some of what we had at the end there and bottle it up and go forward with it."
That doesn't mean, under any circumstances, that he's ignoring what happened for the first 45 minutes of the contest against Baltimore.
He is expecting better, and there's at least something that gives confidence the improvement is on the way.
"No, I'm very disappointed that we got beat today," Jones said. "Very disappointed. And you can't in any way sugarcoat the fact that we got beat, and there were parts of the way we got beat that were really areas we've got to get a lot better in. … We've got a lot of work to do, but we've got time to do that kind of work and we've got a short week this week, but we've got to start.
"That was disappointing … When you look at the whole picture, we got outplayed today."
Now one game back of the Philadelphia Eagles with 14 regular season games left to play, it's about fixing things sooner than later to avoid finding themselves in a situation wherein they're regretting dropping early games that could ultimately determine playoff seeding, or their playoff fate altogether.
Jones hopes the confidence has returned to the team after what they were nearly able to do in the fourth quarter against the Ravens.
"It takes a lot of stuff after going all day long, playing the way we were playing, shooting ourselves in the foot, then making some big plays," he said. "That takes something to come back and give that kind of effort at the end. I'm going to hang my hat on that.
"I hope our fans will [too]."
On to New York.
