A matchup against the Cowboys has recently become a get-right game opportunity for other teams around the NFL, with the lowly Arizona Cardinals being just the most recent team to take advantage.
The Cardinals snapped a five-game losing skid in their 27-17 win over Dallas on Monday night, becoming the fifth team in the nine weeks of the 2025 season to score their highest point total of the year against the Cowboys.
Even though much of Cowboys Nation long ago lost faith in defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, identifying him as the architect of a bad scheme that simply does not fit with the personnel he actually has to work with, the man who signs his paychecks has given him yet another public vote of confidence.
And not just for the rest of this season, but beyond as well.
“I see a guy that’s very pragmatic,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of Eberflus on 105.3 The Fan Tuesday morning. “He’s got his eye on the ball. He knows the things, in my mind, where we need to make adjustments. And where we’re not making adjustments, I think is the best way to say it. But the main thing is, he’s been in some hard times before relative to his team not playing well, and he’s brought them out of a nosedive. That’s the key thing.”
That’s precisely where the Cowboys find themselves right now: a nosedive. Having now lost three of their last four outings, their 3-5-1 record gives them just a 5% probability- by some calculations- of making the postseason. The defense is giving up the most points and yards per game of any NFC squad, is allowing the highest third-down conversion rate in the league, and is among the five easiest red-zone units in football to score on.
Yet, Jones doesn’t want to hang that on the man he hand-picked to design and run the defense, commenting, “No one person wins it; no one person loses it.”
That was certainly true Monday night, with the Cowboys offense turning in a second straight stinker. Head coach Brian Schottenheimer spread blame for the loss around and looked for bright spots from Eberflus’s defense, saying after Monday night’s game, “I do think the defense did some good things.”
Like five sacks, equaling the total from their previous three games combined. And not allowing a third-down conversion in the second half… although the Cards got to third down just four times and had converted a whopping 7-of-9 before the break.
There is some measure of hope that things could improve defensively over the next seven games. The Cowboys are expecting to get linebacker DeMarvion Overshown back after the bye. And as of Tuesday morning, they’ve traded for Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson, a player who Jones calls “a guy that knows how to get in the gaps.”
Problem is, there are just too many gaps under Eberflus. But Jones sounds unwilling to make a change in that role. After going from Dan Quinn to Mike Zimmer to Eberflus in consecutive seasons, Jones says he now sees the Cowboys’ recent revolving door at defensive coordinator as a mistake… hinting that it’s one he won’t make again in the rapidly-approaching offseason.
“I’ve erred over the last three years with the changing of defensive coordinators,” Jones explained Tuesday. “When I look back, if I see one thing that I had to do over again, I would have tried to not change out our coordinator every year over the last three years. Continuity; I know better. Continuity in football is important.”
Yes it is. The up-and-down Cowboys hadn’t won or lost two games in a row all season until Monday night’s Cardinals collapse.
Now carrying a two-game losing streak into the bye and seemingly stuck with Eberflus driving the defense for the foreseeable future, though, Cowboys fans can be rightfully concerned that this ineptitude is what the team will be continuing.
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This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: ‘Very pragmatic’: Jerry Jones hints he’ll stick with Cowboys DC Matt Eberflus beyond ’25
Reporting by Todd Brock, Cowboys Wire / Cowboys Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
