ARLINGTON, Texas — The entire immediate Jones family was at AT&T Stadium Tuesday morning for the ribbon-cutting of the new Miller Lite House, where there will be a free watch party during the Cowboys' season-opening game against the defending champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers Thursday night.
Stephen Jones took a moment after the ceremony to speak with the media about a few topics going into the game that fans have been waiting for since last January.
Below are a few highlights of points that came out of Tuesday's event.
- Jerry and Stephen Jones both confirmed that the slightest possibility of Zack Martin playing on Thursday remained after testing positive for COVID-19 last weekend. Stephen Jones said it was "still not out of the question" and they "haven't ruled him out totally." Martin would need to provide two negative COVID-19 tests and be symptom-free over the next two days in order to play. Jones said that, if Martin accomplished this after the team flies out to Tampa Bay, then "we could fly him in on Thursday."
- Jerry Jones said that in the possibility that Martin goes through the NFL's protocol for COVID-19 and becomes eligible to play at the last minute, Jones wouldn't be remotely worried about him starting without having practiced all week.
- Despite Martin's positive test, Stephen Jones said that he believed that COVID-19 would be less of a problem as whole over the season because so many players and staff have been vaccinated. He claimed that only "three players" in the entire practice squad and 53-man roster have not begun the process of being vaccinated.
- While Dak Prescott did not take a single preseason snap, Stephen Jones said that the quarterback is "100 percent ready to go" for Thursday's game and said that he "looked outstanding" in practice. He also said that Prescott, who hasn't played since suffering his ankle injury last October, does not have the expectation that he will be rusty, and Stephen Jones has "total confidence in Dak and how he feels about what he can do for this football team."
- The Miller Lite House will provide everything that a venue could offer in terms of watching a slate of NFL games, but Stephen Jones said that Miller Lite and the Dallas Cowboys organization also wanted to strengthen their relationship with the fantasy football participants. Aside from 60 televisions to watch games on, the Miller Lite House has two fantasy football screens that will display live-updating stats to monitor individual players. "We're so fired up for what this could mean for our fans playing fantasy football," Jones said.
