DMN: Cowboys are still looking for home-field advantage at ‘Jerry World’

[Irving Cowboy]

Cowboys are still looking for home-field advantage at ‘Jerry World’
By Rainer Sabin / Reporter
2:05 pm on September 21, 2012

IRVING – It’s undeniable that Cowboys Stadium is a tourist destination. But the question still exists about whether it provides an advantage to the NFL team that occupies it. Since the facility dubbed “Jerry World” opened in 2009, the Cowboys have played 25 regular-season and playoff games, prevailing three more times than they’ve lost.

The .560 winning percentage there is considerably worse than the one the Cowboys posted in Texas Stadium, where they won more than 68 percent of their games.

Last year, Marcus Spears said the crowd at the Cowboys’ old home was “way louder.”

Earlier this week, Jason Hatcher seemed to agree with that observation when asked if it was noisy inside owner Jerry Jones’ billion-dollar football Xanadu.

“No comment,” he said. “I got to tell the truth, but no comment.”

Yet Hatcher said the team wouldn’t be dependent on the crowd in the team’s home opener Sunday against Tampa Bay.

“We just have to go out there and play football,” he said. “Whether they’re loud or not, whether we have a 12th man or not, it doesn’t mean nothing. We just have to go out there and play Cowboy football. Whether you come in there and you can hear a cricket farting, we just got to go in there and do what we got to do.”

But it helps when a certain stadium becomes known as a hostile environment for opponents. Last week, the Cowboys visited such a place when they went to Seattle’s CenturyLink Field and left with a 27-7 loss. That the Seahawks claimed yet another victory there wasn’t a surprise. Since 2002, when it opened, the Seahawks have won 65 percent of their game at home.

Dallas would like to experience similar success inside Cowboys Stadium.

“We’re definitely going to look forward to winning more of our home games as well as our away games,” safety Barry Church said. “But definitely at home.”

 

[Irving Cowboy]

Will Cowboys Stadium be tough place to play?
September, 21, 2012
By Todd Archer | ESPNDallas.com

IRVING, Texas – Before Cowboys Stadium opened in 2009, owner and general manager Jerry Jones said he expected the team to play up to the level of the $1.2 billion structure.

After three seasons, the Cowboys have a 13-11 regular-season record in Arlington as they enter Sunday’s home opener against Tampa Bay.

Jones is still waiting.

The Cowboys have beaten one eventual playoff team at home in the first three seasons (Philadelphia, 2009) and seven of their 11 losses have come against postseason teams (San Diego, 2009; Chicago, 2010; New Orleans, 2010; Philadelphia, 2010; Detroit, 2011; New York Giants 2011).

“We think it’s real important to win your home games,” said coach Jason Garrett, who has a 7-5 mark as the team’s head coach at home. “It should be a friendly environment to you, and we talk a lot about the hostile environments we had to face the first couple of weeks up in New York and going to Seattle. There should be a flip side to that where you feel better about yourself playing at home.

"At the end of the day though, the Tampa Bay Bucs are coming in here and we’re going to have a three-hour football game. Whether we play them at our place, their place, on the moon or the parking lot, we just have to get ready to play a football game. We emphasize that to the team all the time. We don’t talk a lot about streaks. We talk a lot about the now and if you take care of the now over and over and over again you typically get on a pretty good streak.”

With crowds ranging from 80,000-105,000, Cowboys Stadium is not considered a loud or difficult venue to play in as evidenced by the 13-11 record.

Players, like Brandon Carr, said the team has to give the fans something to cheer about.

“I think the crowd’s been great,” linebacker Sean Lee said. “If we come up with some more wins and more plays, the better it will be. The crowd support has been tremendous. We’ve got to continue to improve our home identity.”