Jones observing practices at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala.
Jerry Jones is a frustrated general manager, and just like Dallas Cowboy fans everywhere, he should be. The Cowboys fell just short of the playoffs this year, but you can point to a handful of games where the Cowboys could have, nay, should have won. If they had closed those games out it could possibly be the Cowboys in Indianapolis this week.
Granted, the Cowboys would have had to play at a completely different level in the playoffs and even without the collapses I’m not sure they would have been capable to knock of the Packers in Lambeau. But, nonetheless, Cowboys fans are forced to watch their division rival, New York, go for a second Super Bowl since 2007.
Jerry Jones spoke with the media Monday while preparing for the Senior Bowl, and there may have been a little envy in his voice when talking about the Giants, “(The Giants are) just like the Green Bay Packers were last year, in a different way,” Jones said Monday, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “They’re a real inspiration of, frankly, what I had hoped that we were going to be, and that is a team that had played, had good days and bad days, but then near the end really took off on a run and then really made improvement. They did it, and we didn’t. We went the other way.”
Jones wasn’t the only one who has watched and wondered what could have been, but eve he knew that the Cowboys may not have had what it takes even if they did manage to sneak into the playoffs, “We didn’t play good enough to compete or play at this level, and I don’t know that we would have been competing, had we gotten in the playoffs, at the level the Giants are,” Jones said.
Jones did give a lot of praise to his quarterback. Tony Romo, while he struggled to close out games at the beginning of the year, had one of his best years as a pro. Romo had a career-high 102.5 quarterback rating and threw 31 touchdowns to just 10 interceptions. But it wasn’t Romo that struggled down the stretch, a fact that Jones has not overlooked, “We had good quarterback play,” he said. “But I’d say as a team, they (Giants) just got better and better near the end and we did the opposite.”
Despite all the doom-and-gloom around Valley Ranch, Jones did get optimistic when thinking of next year, “We’ve got a lot of work to do with our personnel,” Jones said. “The good news is that we’re not starting out at quarterback. We’ve got a competitor there and we’ve got a lot of good skill people around him.”
January 25th, 2012 
Russ Loede 
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