There’s an old trick that authors use when writing a work of fiction. At any given moment, in almost any situation, the idea is to make things as difficult as possible. Make the challenges bigger. Make the outlook bleaker. Make the circumstances more dire. Give the hero more to overcome along the way than seems even possible, and it makes the victory that much sweeter and more satisfying in the end.
The Dallas Cowboys are still working on the story of their 2019 season. Their Thanksgiving Day meltdown at the hands of the Bills will certainly go down as one of its darkest chapters. But owner Jerry Jones is optimistic that there could be a plot twist coming on the very next page, and that this team has a surprise ending waiting in the wings.
“Adversity gives you an opportunity to really write a hell of a story about how to come back,” Jones said after the 26-15 loss.
But judging by Jones’s postgame comments, he is not willing to go so far as to kill off one of his major characters. Despite a tenure defined by mediocrity and punctuated by countless head-scratching decisions, coach Jason Garrett, who has led a seemingly-talent-laden team to six losses in their last nine games, will remain in place.
“This is not the time,” Jones said of a possible coaching change with four games left in the regular season. “For me, I’m looking ahead at another ballgame, and I’m looking ahead at winning four or five straight and helping write a story that they’ll talk about, how it looked like you were down and out and got it done. And I mean that. I mean that. That’s the way that I’m operating. Every decision that I make over the next month will be with an eye and mind to get us in the Super Bowl now.”
Cowboys players echoed that optimism, even if a story that ends in this roster and coaching staff ripping off a four-game win streak feels like pure science fiction.
“We know what we need to do,” linebacker Jaylon Smith told reporters after the loss. “Four games left, and winning is the name of the game.”
“We feel real good about our chances,” running back Ezekiel Elliott told the media afterward. “We feel really good about what we have in store for the rest of the season.”
As bad as the Cowboys looked hosting their traditional holiday contest, the team didn’t lose any ground in their chase of a divisional crown. Still clinging to a better record than the Eagles but with a more difficult slate of opponents ahead, Dallas players feel they need to win out in order to claim the NFC East and make the postseason.
“We can still win our division and go to the playoffs,” cornerback Jourdan Lewis said after the game. “That’s what it is. Of course, we wanted to win this one, but at the same time, we’ve got to look forward and do our best to get to the playoffs.”
“We know we can do that because we control our destiny,” quarterback Dak Prescott said from the podium in his postgame press conference. “We control the work that we put in, we control how we approach each and every day, we control the way that we prepare to get ready for these games. I have so much confidence in the men in that locker room, the character that they have, and I wouldn’t want to be, honestly, in this position with anybody else except those men. so confident in what we’re going to do.”
Prescott has spent months praising the character of the men in the locker room and expressing confidence in what they’re going to do. Problem is, they’ve only done it against bad teams. Thursday’s beatdown by Buffalo was just the latest dismal showing against the exact kind of quality opponent that Dallas would see should they qualify for postseason play.
The result was an embarrassing loss that left recently-added defensive end Michael Bennett screaming at his new teammates in the locker room.
Some Cowboys player is screaming in the locker room right now. It lasted for at least a minute pic.twitter.com/mNX60YEC7y
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) November 29, 2019
“It was very disappointing,” wideout Amari Cooper told the press, “just with everything that’s at stake, where we are in the season. A loss in general is just very disappointing, but to lose in this fashion with where we are is just devastating.”
“We’re definitely in the low of this season,” receiver Randall Cobb said in postgame interviews, “but the bright side is we’ve got four games to go. And anything can happen in those four weeks, and we kind of control our own destiny at this point.”
“We’re just pissed,” Elliott summed up. “We’re pissed at how we’ve let this season go. But the good thing about it is we control our own future. We’ve just got to find a way to go out there and win the rest of these games.”
“All it takes is winning one game and getting the thing rolling,” Cobb offered hopefully.
What it won’t take to get things rolling, according to the man who writes the checks? A Week 14 firing of his head coach.
“I wouldn’t make a change and give us a chance to do what I want to dream about doing,” Jones said. “I wouldn’t do that for love nor money. I’d give us zero chance if we did that.”
“He understands it,” Prescott said of the club’s impassioned owner. “He understands that we need everybody in that locker room- players, coaches, everybody that’s a part of it- to get to where we want to be.”
Fans may have soured long ago on Garrett’s maddeningly-even-keeled style and are understandably frustrated by the the lackluster results he’s getting from his players. But Jones isn’t ready to give up on Garrett, with whom he’s had a relationship since even before he joined the Cowboys as a practice squad player in 1992.
“I know Jason very well,” Jones said. “I’ve had a wonderful opportunity to spend a football life with him, so I know him very well.”
But sometimes an author can get too attached to his longstanding hero. And no conflict is too great that there isn’t hope that the hero can rise to the challenge and overcome the odds, no matter how improbable.
After a thoroughly gutting Thanksgiving Day plot twist, Jones is still thinking about how the 2019 disaster epic currently being penned in Dallas can get its storybook ending:
“The way that I’m going to handle this is encourage everybody to basically look to the possibility of winning out and end up doing something that people will write about 30 years from now and being a part of that. I like that story tonight as I eat my turkey.”
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