The Dallas Cowboys entered Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos ranked 30th in points per game allowed and dead last in the league in yards per game.
Dallas didn’t do much to improve those rankings, allowing the Broncos to rack up 426 yards of total offense en route to a 44-24 loss while the Cowboys dropped to 3-4-1 this season.
After the game, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones suggested he didn’t think the defense would be markedly better by trading for an elite defensive player.
“I don’t know what’s realistic,” Jones said. “Could one better player — if we didn’t pay too big a price to have a better player on defense to possibly help? I’m not trying to be cute, but that’s why you’d go get him because you think that you could go help your defense. Are we one player away on defense? I think we’re not. I think we’re more than that away, but what we’re closer to than it looks, in my mind, is executing better on defense.”
While he doesn’t believe adding a dominant player is the answer, Jones did admit the current linebacker corps isn’t good enough. Following Sunday’s loss the owner put the blame for Denver’s 179 rushing yards directly on the linebackers.
“We need to basically have better play from the linebackers maintaining the integrity of our gaps, which the linebackers have to fill, the linebackers have to slide. So they did a good job against us, Denver, and we did a poor job,” Jones admitted after the game.
Dallas has a chance to move to 4-4-1 on the season with a Monday night game against the Arizona Cardinals coming in Week 9 before the team’s bye week.
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