Jason Garrett's job is safe, but only for the moment. In the aftermath of Dallas' 26-15 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Thanksgiving to move them to 6-6 on the season, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones confirmed to reporters that this latest stumble by Garrett won't cost him his job.
"I'm just not going to make a coaching change," Jones said, via NFL.com. "This is not the time."
This latest loss not only brings Dallas to a .500 record, but it also moves them to an 0-5 record against teams with a winning record in 2019. Despite that, Jones noted that if he were to move on from Garrett in-season, that would drastically hurt Dallas' chances of getting to and winning Super Bowl LIV.
"I wouldn't make a change and give us a chance to do what I want to dream about doing. I wouldn't do that for love nor money," Jones said, via Pro Football Talk. "It would give us zero chance if we didn't have [Garrett]."
While it feels like the Cowboys are on the ropes after losing two straight, Jones' club still has the inside track at making the playoffs. No matter if the Philadelphia Eagles win or lose on Sunday, Dallas would still have ahold of the NFC East lead coming out of Week 13 as they currently own the tiebreaker over Philly. If the Eagles do beat the Miami Dolphins, however, that would draw them even record-wise and potentially set up a massive Week 16 showdown between the two at Lincoln Financial Field.
The Cowboys got embarrassed on Thanksgiving there's a lot to go over. Fortunately Will Brinson, John Breech, Ryan Wilson and Sean Wagner-McGough are here to break everything down from all three games on the Pick Six Podcast. Listen to the full show below and be sure to subscribe here for daily NFL goodness fired into your eardrums.
Before we get too ahead of ourselves with that potential division determining contest, Jones reiterated that he's focusing on the here-and-now. That immediate future for Dallas doesn't include a change at the top.
"I'm going to do the same thing I've always done when I get a setback or get my butt kicked," Jones said. "I'm going to get up in the morning, and I'm going to look for ways [to help], and I'm not going to panic. I'm going to look for ways to improve the situation. I'm still glad that when I get up in the morning, I can look for ways to help our team. One of them is not a coaching change. One of them is not reworking the offense or the defense. Those aren't alternatives for us to be ready to play over the next month and give us a chance to be what we want to be. But if we stay healthy and other contenders might not, and all of a sudden we start jelling, and we start getting some turnovers, then those games will turn out differently. I like our bet there. I do, even though we haven't played well the last three games. I like our bet.
"As I said, nobody is satisfied with how we played even when we played Detroit. That's not taking away from anything, but we can play better, and if we can play better, we've still got the base health of this team and we've got the personnel that we can put out there and we've got some coaches, generally coaches here, that I believe in. It's not working the way they'd thought it'd work, or I'd thought it'd work, but I believe in these coaches to be here to begin with."
Dallas has the Bears, Rams, Eagles and Redskins remaining on the schedule and, for Garrett to keep his job heading into 2020, he'll likely need to lead them to a near-perfect record in those games, while also stamping the Cowboys ticket to the postseason.
If he fails in that endeavor, Jerry Jones likely won't be as merciful as he was Thursday night.