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Jerry Jones: Cowboys 'pretending' they're still 0-3 to stay sharp in bye week
02:38 PM
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wants his 1-2 team to keep its edge of desperation during the bye week.
And he's pushing an intriguing psychological button this week to do that -- instructing his coaching staff to act as if they're still in winless, crisis mode during this bye week.
Imagine Cowboys coach Wade Phillips as actor Jimmy Stewart's character George Bailey in the Frank Capra Christmas classic film It's a Wonderful Life.'
MORE COWBOYS: Herm Edwards scolds team for publicizing Dez Bryant's $55,000 bar tab
Instead of waking up this week at 1-2 in Valley Ranch, Phillips wakes up in Pottersville -- the dark, sinister place that would have been life in Capra's film if George Bailey had never been born.
Leave it to Jones to borrow from classic Americana to keep America's Team's pedal to the metal.
Acknowledging that his team plays its best when the pressure is highest, Jones told USA TODAY, "You know what we're doing? We're pretending. I'm pretending.
"It's a luxury to be able to do it this bye week. And I asked our coaches to do the same thing: 'Let's pretend for a few days here that we're 0-3 and try to run that tape forward and feel how it would feel (to be winless) and how you'd be being criticized.
"Let's get all that on us because we've got an opportunity to do it.
"It's like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. You've got a chance now, and then you wake up and say, 'That's not the case, and say, 'Hey, let's go.'
"That'll cause you to do maybe that little extra thing during this bye week that will help us maybe not have that feeling again.''
It's as if Sunday win at Houston never happened and Phillips and the Cowboys are still trying to figure a way to climb out of a hole.
Wonder who will play Clarence, the guardian angel who shows up in the film to intervene and show a stressed-out George all the lives he's touched when he was contemplating jumping off a Bedford Falls bridge?
Roy Williams? Dez Bryant?
-- Jim Corbett
02:38 PM
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wants his 1-2 team to keep its edge of desperation during the bye week.
And he's pushing an intriguing psychological button this week to do that -- instructing his coaching staff to act as if they're still in winless, crisis mode during this bye week.
Imagine Cowboys coach Wade Phillips as actor Jimmy Stewart's character George Bailey in the Frank Capra Christmas classic film It's a Wonderful Life.'
MORE COWBOYS: Herm Edwards scolds team for publicizing Dez Bryant's $55,000 bar tab
Instead of waking up this week at 1-2 in Valley Ranch, Phillips wakes up in Pottersville -- the dark, sinister place that would have been life in Capra's film if George Bailey had never been born.
Leave it to Jones to borrow from classic Americana to keep America's Team's pedal to the metal.
Acknowledging that his team plays its best when the pressure is highest, Jones told USA TODAY, "You know what we're doing? We're pretending. I'm pretending.
"It's a luxury to be able to do it this bye week. And I asked our coaches to do the same thing: 'Let's pretend for a few days here that we're 0-3 and try to run that tape forward and feel how it would feel (to be winless) and how you'd be being criticized.
"Let's get all that on us because we've got an opportunity to do it.
"It's like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. You've got a chance now, and then you wake up and say, 'That's not the case, and say, 'Hey, let's go.'
"That'll cause you to do maybe that little extra thing during this bye week that will help us maybe not have that feeling again.''
It's as if Sunday win at Houston never happened and Phillips and the Cowboys are still trying to figure a way to climb out of a hole.
Wonder who will play Clarence, the guardian angel who shows up in the film to intervene and show a stressed-out George all the lives he's touched when he was contemplating jumping off a Bedford Falls bridge?
Roy Williams? Dez Bryant?
-- Jim Corbett