Staying with the same tone he had in the locker room after Thursday's 38-31 loss to the Washington Redskins, Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones wasn't optimistic when asked Tuesday about his team having time to correct their mistakes and still reach the postseason.
"Getting it right, we do [have time]. Yes. We're running out of time as to the playoffs," Jones said on 105.3 The Fan [KRLD-FM]. "Do we enough time? It's numerically possible, but you have to really step out there this week and do the right things to win a ballgame on the field. But you have time to do that."
The Thanksgiving Day loss dropped the Cowboys to 5-6, two games back of the New York Giants in the division standings. On paper, the Cowboys are a game behind the Seattle Seahawks for the final Wild Card spot but it's actually two games because Seattle owns the tiebreaker from defeating the Cowboys 27-7 in Week Two.
With five games remaining, Jones made it known that there are more than the playoffs on the line for his team.
"Certainly, as you go into the final weeks of your season, you want to be playing at an up-tick to play well in the playoffs," Jones said. "But there's another reason why you want to be playing well, too. You want to be playing well so that you can basically look at your core and see where you are with your core, evaluate your core as far as seasons to come.
"So there's several reasons for playing well, and there's no lack of incentive in pro football because players know that they've got the eye of the league, the eye of not only the Cowboys, but everyone's on them, so you'll have big effort."
The Philadelphia Eagles, who have lost their last seven, travel to Cowboys Stadium on Sunday night. After that, the Cowboys' schedule finishes with the 6-5 Cincinnati Bengals, the 6-5 Pittsburgh Steelers, the 5-6 New Orleans Saints and the 5-6 Redskins.
The schedule is filled with parity, something that doesn't surprise Jones. What does surprise him is that the Cowboys haven't won more games.
"I thought we'd be better than this," Jones said. "Although I do realize the kind of competition we got in the league. We got nine teams that are 5-6 or 6-5 in the NFL right now. I knew we were in a league that has a lot of competition but I thought we'd be better."
Follow Jon Machota on Twitter: @jonmachota
