It may seem like a minor issue, especially in light of a 3-6 season in a death spiral, but what is becoming “Curtain-gate” is a symptom of the larger issue.
The Dallas Cowboys are an un-serious organization from top to bottom.
The recent reemergence of why having a wall of glass at the western end of AT&T Stadium is a bad idea merely highlights the larger problem. It’s made worse by how Jerry Jones and the front office easily dismisses it.
What makes their response all that more egregious is how easily the problem could be fixed.
Yet, it remains a problem.
Give The Sun a Game Ball
In Sunday’s loss to the Eagles, with a chance to take a 10-7 lead, Cooper Rush threw a pass to an open CeeDee Lamb.
The ball landed harmlessly in the endzone. Many on social media immediately jumped to the conclusion that Rush “missed a wide-open Lamb.”
Roughly 99.99% of those people are die-hard Dak Prescott defenders.
We’ll deal with them later this week.
But a replay from behind Rush showed that the ball was actually on target and should have been caught. Or rather, it would have been caught if Lamb had ever seen the ball in the first place.
He didn’t see it because the ball was thrown into the eastern endzone and Lamb was looking back at Rush with the sun directly behind the quarterback.
Lamb immediately indicated that he never saw the ball and pointed to the blinding glare from the west. And we can all thank Jerry Jones for that.
Why, Jerry, Why?
When AT&T Stadium was planned and constructed, apparently no one thought to ask why the field was facing east-west when every other stadium’s field sits in a north-south configuration.
With walls of glass at each end of the stadium, sunlight freely pours onto the field below. Since this was going to happen at every Cowboys game played on Sunday afternoon, apparently no one thought about blocking that light.
Oh wait, they did.
They have curtains that are drawn whenever there are concerts or other events inside. But those curtains are never drawn when the Cowboys are playing.
Why?
Because Jones is not a serious NFL owner, or a serious NFL General Manager.
He’s P.T. Barnum with a larger checkbook.
Jones cares more about being a showman than he does winning. How do we know?
Check out the responses by Jones and the Cowboys’ front office when their star receiver, Lamb, publicly called out the sun issues impacting the game.
“Let’s Blow Up The Stadium”
Instead of acknowledging what the rest of the world can clearly see, Jones threw a tantrum when the question was raised after Sunday’s loss.
“Well let’s tear the damn stadium down and build another one. Are you kidding me?… Everybody has the same thing. Every team that comes in here has the same issues.”
He went on to rant about “where is the moon” among other things. As to his comment about blowing up AT&T?
Given the Cowboys haven’t fared all that well since moving to Arlington, one might be tempted to tell Jones that his terms are acceptable.
In short, Jones likes the visuals produced by the sunlight like these:
And if his players are blinded by that light and can’t make plays? Who cares?
How many games could Dallas have won if a play would have been made with the curtains closed? Who knows?
That the answer is almost certainly more than one is unacceptable.
What makes this so much more aggravating is that this should be a minor problem that is easily fixed.
Leave the curtains open until kickoff, then close them during the game.
Sadly, Jones apparently couldn’t care less.
A cameraman at the next Mike McCarthy press conference set this up. See how easy it is to block the sun?
But neither Jones nor anyone else in the front office seems capable of grasping the concept.
Want one more example of how un-serious this organization is?
The Cowboys were showing a Veterans Day tribute to Tom Landry. They spelled the name of the greatest coach in team history like this:
Tom Laundry. Hat tip to Jon Machota on X for the screengrab here.
Inexcusable. Unacceptable.
Un-serious people run this organization.
Frankly, I’m surprised this clown show didn’t put up Roger Staubach’s photo and spell his name as: Starbuck.
Battlestar Galactica fans will get the reference.
And this is just one symptom of why this organization hasn’t been back to even a conference title game in nearly three decades. So many more exist.
Until this disease is cured, until serious football people are calling the shots, we’re in for suffering through a long-term illness.