It's been 22 years since the Cowboys last won a Super Bowl. And now that the division-rival Eagles are four weeks removed from their first Lombardi Trophy, Jerry Jones admits that the pressure's on in Dallas.
"I think it raises the bar. I think it puts pressure on the Cowboys," the owner and general manager said Saturday from Indianapolis, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Clarence Hill. "They've took it down to the bone and brought it back up and have a world championship and we've been doing the same thing. Where is ours? That's fair. That's fair."
Jones, who said the night before the Eagles faced the Patriots in Super Bowl LII that "the muffled voice you have been hearing is me screaming in my pillow over not being here and seeing Philadelphia," eventually came around, conceding that he was pulling for Philly to beat New England.
"As much as we have the rivalry that we have, and as frustrating as it was for the Cowboys not to be playing, as much as all of that, I was proud of [the Eagles], given that narrow set of circumstances, could root for them," Jones said. "That takes it right down to just absolutely no choice, you either do or you die. And I want to go again."
The Cowboys, who went 13-3 in 2016 and had high expectations last season, slipped to 9-7 and missed the playoffs, in part because of injuries to Tyron Smith and Sean Lee, Ezekiel Elliott's suspension, and Dak Prescott not playing nearly as well as he did as a rookie. Still, Jones isn't looking for excuses, particularly given what the Eagles were able to accomplish without franchise quarterback Carson Wentz, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in December.
"They didn't have a quarterback either, and they got one, and then they lost him and they got one," Jones said. "You didn't have Zeke, so good excuse, but they didn't have a lot of their players. So just the fact that they did it the way they did it, really for me it sure eliminates one of the real excuses. You can say that you just can't have the kind of depth, but they didn't have necessarily that kind of depth but they had enough that they shifted some of the ability of the team to execute their parts where they had their regulars, and we didn't do that.
"We're pretty easy to compare if you look at where they have some of their talent -- quarterback, we have a quarterback -- and we got some comparables to where they are, so then why not us? What's wrong with us? They got a young quarterback, they got a young coach. They just got a better owner," Jones joked before adding: "Not as good a general manager but ..."
Howie Roseman, it turns out, ain't bad at his job either.
