Cowboys fans may have thought nothing else could go wrong this season.
As if.
For a brief period late Monday afternoon when it looked as though the retractable roof at AT&T Stadium would be open for Monday night’s primetime meeting with the Houston Texans. Now that’s in doubt after some sort of mechanical issue sent a giant piece of metal fall to the turf below and left more torn-away scrap hanging in the rafters.
Stadium workers began opening the roof several hours before kickoff, signalling a rather rare event for the venue that first opened in 2009. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones famously said recently- after the most recent complaints about the setting sun shining through the east/west-oriented windows causing problems for players- that the stadium, with its glass walls and retractable roof, was constructed to mimic the feel of an outdoor venue.
Yet the roof hadn’t been opened for a game in two years, and it’s been opened for less than 25% of all Cowboys games ever played there.
With perfect conditions forecast for Monday night (and possibly to distract slightly from the team’s godawful 3-6 record), Jones and the team made the decision to open the roof for the nationally-televised game.
But shortly after the roof opened, a large piece of metal fell from the structure. Media members from the various TV outlets were already on the field doing pregame reports. The debris is seen in video posted by NBC DFW’s Noah Bullard.
Here is the piece of large metal that fell from the @ATTStadium retractable roof as it opened @NBCDFW pic.twitter.com/ZYE4G4Dxa6
— Noah Bullard (@noah_bullard) November 18, 2024
The roof was closed again and per The Athletic‘s Jon Machota, crews are investigating, ostensibly to determine whether or not it can be safely opened again.
Update: The mandated 90-minute countdown to kickoff has started. The roof will officially remain closed for the game, as it would have had to have been opened prior to that deadline.
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While there were thankfully no injuries, the punchlines surrounding the incident in this “train wreck” of a Cowboys season will write themselves for some time.
ESPN’s Ryan Clark, speaking from the Monday Night Countdown desk set up on the turf at the stadium, cracked, “The bottom done already fell out in Dallas; the top might as well, too.”
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