The Dallas Cowboys and owner Jerry Jones tried to say all the right things in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s thrilling and emotionally exhausting 40-40 overtime tie with the Green Bay Packers at AT&T Stadium.
It was the second-highest-scoring tied game ever, featuring nine lead changes and two ties.
No one likes a tie.
Quarterback Dak Prescott had this response when asked if a “tie was like kissing your sister”?
“Good thing I don’t have sister,” Prescott quipped as he walked into the locker room.
“You don’t play the game for ties,” Prescott added in the post-game press conference. “I don’t care about the stats, the ups and downs, the ebbs and flows. I just care about the end result and the win. When you don’t get that right now, it’s tough for me. In 10 years, it’s the first tie I’ve been a part of. It’s hard to wrap my head around it because I know I’d feel a lot worse if it was a loss. But, I’m not satisfied. not that I would be if we’d won. But it’s a weird feeling…”
Jones was even more clever when asked about a tie and kissing his sister, “I don’t know. What does it taste like?”
The Cowboys owner then smiled and laughed.
Although he wanted to win the game badly because it was the Packers with defensive end Micah Parsons looking to exact some revenge after being traded from the Cowboys exactly a month earlier following a contract dispute, Jones was hardly a disappointed man leaving the stadium and heading home in his helicopter.
“Better than I could have felt,” Jones said when asked about feelings. “It’s like they ask you in some states about where your residence is. It’s where you go when you’ve been away. Well, I feel better than I could have felt. Okay, but worse than I could have felt as well. “
Who knows all that means but this game was not just a normal regular season game.
It was on Sunday night in prime time. The world was watching.
Jones wanted to win it badly because it probably also meant in his mind that he won the controversial trade. The Cowboys also didn’t want to be shown up in their own house with no one expecting them to win and a bitter Parsons looking to do a victory lap of his own.
The Packers (2-1-1) certainly didn’t look like the Super Bowl contending team were they billed to be, tying the Cowboys one week after losing to the winless Cleveland Browns.
And a Cowboys team _ playing without their best offensive weapon in All-Pro receiver CeeDee Lamb and two starters on the offensive line in right guard Tyler Booker and center Cooper Beebe and coming off an embarrassing 31-14 loss to Chicago Bears _ played inspired football to improve to 1-2-1 on the season.
“I just can’t let this team under these circumstances _ Micah, Green Bay, the stature of Green Bay, no, we appreciate it _ I just can’t let this team drop that head down over what might be half-loss,” Jones. “And I said that to everybody, and I mean that. We played hard, we played good, and we’ve got some good days ahead of us.”
Dallas still has not beaten Green Bay since 2016. Dating to 2009, Green Bay is 10-1-1 in the series.
The Packers had won five straight in the series with the last meeting being the most shocking and embarrassing loss for the Cowboys in more than a decade if not ever, a 48-32 playoff setback to end the 2023 season in a year Jones hoped the franchise could reach the Super Bowl for the first time since their last title in 1996.
“Oh, what a disaster,” Jones said at the time. “This loss hurt us in every way, more than any one we’ve ever had.”
No one gave them a chance Sunday night.
And ending with a tie was better than nothing.
That it came against the Parsons and the Packers made it feel even better, at least for Jones.
Never mind that the Cowboys defense continues to perform abysmally and could use pass rush help from Parsons.
The Cowboys, who give up 420.5 yards to rank last in the NFL in total defense and are 31st in points allowed at 33 points per game, offered little resistance to Packers quarterback Jordan Love.
Love completed 31 of 43 passes for 337 yards and three touchdowns. He was sacked just once and none in the second half. Most disappointing was the fourth quarter when the Packers rallied from behind three times with 17 points in the final stanza to send the game into overtime.
And never mind that Parsons’ only sack of the game came in overtime when ran down a scrambling Prescott four yards from the goal line with nothing but paydirt in front of him, forcing the Cowboys to settle for a field goal. The Packers matched it on the ensuing drive for the final tie.
But Prescott’s stellar performance all season but especially on Sunday proved to a feather in Jones’ cap regarding his decision to pay the quarterback and not the seemingly Hall-of-Fame bound pass rusher.
“It’s very simple. Dak was indispensable in my mind. And Micah wasn’t,” Jones said succinctly. “It’s just numbers. It’s that easy. And that’s not personal at all. It’s just that without Dak and without that experience he’s got and without the leadership and all of those kinds of things. Last year I decided that we need to make him the highest paid…But the numbers weren’t there with Micah.”
Prescott completed 31-of-40 passes for 319 yards with three touchdowns passing and one running against the Packers. He directed the Cowboys to five touchdown and a field goal on six of their final seven possessions.
“I can’t, I saw him. Right there a minute ago, and I have to agree with you,” Jones said when asked if that was the best game he’s seen Prescott play. “And to not come out with a W for that one is unbelievable for him. But I thought he was the better quarterback tonight, and I would think that, but I do think that.”
Jones chose to make Prescott the highest-paid player in NFL history with a four-year, $240 million contract, including $231 million guaranteed before the 2024 season.
Jones, after Parsons allegedly reneged on a deal in March resulting on months of acrimony through training camp, shockingly decided to trade the three-time All-Pro less than a week before beginning of the 2025 season.
Parsons got a four-year, $188 million extension that includes $136 million guaranteed from the Packers, who saw him as the missing piece to a Super Bowl team. The Cowboys received nose tackle Kenny Clark and two first-round picks in return.
Parsons remains miffed and feels disrespected by Jones and how he handled the situation.
“When [Packers general manager Brian Gutenkurst] that he was trading for me, he said ‘Let me call Kenny [Clark] before it breaks,'” Parsons said. “I didn’t even get to talk to my owner, the person that drafted me. I found out through my agent.
“The same way that he called me in his office as a man, he couldn’t tell me as a man. So to me, that emotion side is gone, it was more about a respect factor at this point.”
Parsons said he hasn’t spoken to Jones since last May, let alone since the trade.
Jones didn’t bat an eye.
“Well, again, it’s just not appropriate,” Jones said. “What are we supposed to do when we’re getting ready to play each other? And all’s at stake for him, and all’s at stake for our team, and the Cowboys. And that’s not appropriate to be visiting as you get ready to play. I know very few people other than his family that have any more pleasant talks with Micah than I’ve had. And they’ll be lasting. There was enough meat on the bone to make a lot of that last a long time. And anybody that doesn’t think you can get a little ruffled up when you’re negotiating over money doesn’t understand human nature. That happens to everybody.”
And so for me, he’s an outstanding young man. He played well tonight, and I thought we played well tonight. We played well against him tonight, and he played well against us. I know that it made it another point or a punctuation point with us playing Green Bay for him to have been traded up there. We didn’t necessarily settle anything on the trade. But I like what we got, and I’m sure Green Bay likes what they got.”
Let Jones tell, he likes what the Cowboys have now and in the future following the Parsons trade.
The Cowboys have four first-round picks over next two years, including theirs and the Packers. That doesn’t include the cap money they saved by not paying Parsons.
All told, he thinks the Cowboys can turn the picks and money into six players.
He’d rather have the win but he was not mad about the tie.
“Which would you rather have out there tonight to determine the game?,” Jones queried. “200 million in cap money? Which would you rather have? And those picks, or as I said, cap money would get you three or four guys you don’t have if you have that. We’ll get six guys.
“We’ll get six top guys for this.”
The math ain’t mathing.
But a tie ain’t a loss.
And in some respects, it was a win for Jones and the supposedly overmatched and short-handed Cowboys Sunday night.
