‘It's not a death sentence’: Jake Ferguson has faith in backup QBs, thinks Cowboys' season can still be saved
After the 34-6 obliteration at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 10 at AT&T Stadium, it seems quite clear that it’s time to close the curtains on the Dallas Cowboys season (yes, pun intended).
This team has been playing with a sub-zero confidence level since the Week 2 beatdown against the now 3-7 Saints and continues to show week in and week out that they don’t have any answers. Throw in losing your starting quarterback for the rest of the year and having to rely on Cooper Rush and Trey Lance to help turn your season around, it doesn’t look promising.
Despite the frustration, tight end Jake Ferguson still has hope. Ferguson recently joined Sports Seriously, on behalf of USAA, and said he wasn’t ready to count Dallas out just yet.
“There’s two things you can do right now in this situation. You can roll over, you can say we’re done, or you can buckle down, figure out what it may be that needs to be done and start winning some games.”
They are sitting at 3-6 with only eight games left and are dealing with injuries at nearly every position. So how can they turn it around? Well, that starts with coaching and quarterback play.
Yes, Dallas went 4-1 with Cooper Rush under center back in 2022 when Dak Prescott was sidelined with a thumb injury for five weeks, but that was with a legitimate run game and a remarkably stout defense— regardless, that seems like a non-issue in the locker room.
“I have full confidence in this team and this coaching staff to pull it together and create the schemes so we can go out and prep the whole week and get ready to execute,” Ferguson said.
Another issue that Dallas needs to fix, and quickly for that matter, is their play at home. In stark contrast to their season last year, in which the Cowboys went 9-0 at home (a 17-game home win streak dating back to 2022), they have now fallen to 0-4 at home in the 2024 season— technically 0-5 if you want to count their Wild Card playoff loss to the Packers last season.
When asked about their struggles at AT&T Stadium and how much that’s dependent on red zone execution, Ferguson didn’t hold back.
“If you want to win games you got to score points. Last game, having two opportunities where I think both were inside the 15, maybe inside the 10, and not executing on that… it’s hard it’s hard to win games doing that.”
He’s right, and from the outside looking in, the two main factors that contribute to that are the lack of efficiency on the ground and the lack of talent outside of CeeDee Lamb.
Ferguson has shown many moments of potential stardom and is without a doubt an elite blocker. However, he’s struggling to get open, which ultimately, comes down to the fact that Mike McCarthy and Brian Schottenheimer have taken away more of his seam routes so he can chip more at the line of scrimmage.
“My job is to do what they tell me to do. I’m doing whatever I can to help this team win and we’re not winning, so there’s obviously some more things that I can do to help this team,” Ferguson said when asked about his use and production.
Additionally, he reiterated that this is not the end.
“It’s not a death sentence. There are things you can do and there are ways to get out of it and it starts with winning games, it starts with one day at a time.”
You can watch the full conversation in the video above.
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