Jerry Jones surprised many when he addressed the crowd at Wednesday's Dallas Cowboys' kickoff luncheon at AT&T Stadium.
Instead of putting his usual positive spin on the upcoming season, the Cowboys owner and general manager acknowledged that his team is facing "an uphill battle" and their backs are "up against the wall."
What happened to the talk of making the playoffs, getting hot at the right time and reaching the Super Bowl?
During a Friday morning radio interview, Jones explained that question marks on defense and the team's overall youth have him taking a different approach.
"When we had our initial team meeting in Oxnard, at training camp, we had 90 players there and I think 48 or 49 of the players had never been in that meeting," Jones said on 105.3 The Fan [KRLD-FM]. "In other words, they were new players, over half of them. So I know they have been challenged and this is a pretty wide-eyed experience to come in, even if you're not a rookie. I know they were challenged.
"The good news is, they played to that, they practiced to that, they studied to that, and I think we can carry that into the first game against San Francisco, just the challenge. If you look at that schedule, they don't make them gimmes. I think we are challenged.
"We've got an offense that basically needs to execute, but that offense can be real good. The defense is a work in progress. And that's a challenge. I don't see that that means that we won't be successful at all. I just think there's probably more of a challenge than when you got DeMarcus Ware at one end and you got [Anthony] Spencer healthy at the other and you got all the guys in between, [Jason] Hatcher and the rest of them, or a healthy Sean Lee."
