Jerry Jones says Cowboys won’t make trades before November deadline

After the Dallas Cowboys’ 47-9 blowout loss to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, a few things have happened. Jerry Jones got snippy with reporters for suggesting a mid-season head coaching change and made it clear that’s not in his plans. Jerry Jones threatened to fire some radio hosts for questioning his decision-making regarding the current roster. And finally, Jerry Jones has said that the Cowboys will not be making any trade moves ahead of the November 5 deadline.

Essentially, he’s believing things will just magically turn around all on their own without making any changes at all and if you have a problem with that, well...you’re fired!

Why Jerry Jones won’t make any trades

Look, I can agree that a change in head coach isn’t going to really solve any problems at this point in the season, mostly because the choices it would leave to fill in the role are worse than the current coach. The problems start much higher than that anyway and began with a terrible offseason. The best thing to do now would be to trade. Back in 2018, they did just that when their wide receiver by committee approach failed. They got Amari Cooper from the Raiders, a decision that worked out quite well for them (though some would argue that wasn’t even done well). Today, they have that same problem with their running backs. The committee approach failed. They rank dead last in rushing yards per game. They already ignored the position in the draft. They passed on Derrick Henry in lieu of Ezekiel Elliott. It’s not too late to make up for that mistake and trade for a running back now.

But alas...that’s not in Jerry Jones’ plans. To do so might even mean to admit error, something he stubbornly refuses to do. In fact, when The Athletic’s Dianna Russini asked him directly whether or not he plans to be active ahead of the trade deadline, his response was, “not thinking that”.

Instead, Jones is looking at the personnel already on the roster to step up. While he admitted “there’s nothing magic about the bye week”, and he’s right, it seems the overall theme for the team during this time off is to “look in the mirror”. Jerry mentioned that he’s seen the current players’ talent. It’s in there somewhere, and he believes it can come back out again this season.

“I know we have outstanding personnel, very outstanding personnel,” said Jones. “We just made our quarterback the highest paid player in the NFL. We’ve just hopped the receiver list charts. So we made our bed, relative to how we’re going to approach it with our key people with the team.”

Part of the problem is the many injuries the Cowboys have had to deal with (particularly on defense), yes. But it can’t all be blamed on that. Assistant defensive line coach Greg Ellis put it perfectly: Teams “aren’t gonna cancel any games for us”. Excuses will only get you so far. There are still plenty of healthy Cowboys, and it’s their responsibility to step up when they are needed. Even Jones admitted as much.

“We were short handed out there on defense, but everybody gets shorthanded,” said Jones. “That’s really not an excuse in the NFL. Your depth should step up there and you should be able if you can, to compensate, to some degree. You can’t compensate for the gap, so to speak, that we had between the way our offense played and the way we were supposed to play.”

It’s true that adding a few players here and there won’t fix Dallas’ many problems (it wouldn’t hurt though). The Cowboys defense is giving up the ninth-most yards per Game (3556.5) and the third-most points per Game (28). Quarterback Dak Prescott has thrown six interceptions this season, including four in the last two Games and has been out of sync with star wide receiver CeeDee Lamb since the season started. The offense has committed the second-most turnovers in the league (11).

Can these problems be fixed without any roster changes? Sure. Will they? To be determined...