{"id":94985,"date":"2025-12-20T03:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T03:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/94985\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T03:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T03:43:09","slug":"stephen-jones-addresses-troy-aikmans-critcism-of-cowboys-way-of-handling-coaching-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/94985\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Jones addresses Troy Aikman\u2019s critcism of Cowboys\u2019 way of handling coaching staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the biggest storylines heading into the Cowboys<\/a>\u2019 final three games of the season is defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus\u2019 future.<\/p>\n

Jerry Jones turned some heads this week with some pointed comments about Eberflus<\/a> heading into Sunday\u2019s game against the Chargers. Cowboys COO and co-owner Stephen Jones joined 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) for an interview and discussed his father\u2019s comments, Eberflus\u2019 future, DaRon Bland\u2019s injury and more.<\/p>\n

Read highlights from the interview below, edited lightly for clarity.<\/p>\n

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Stephen Jones: I mean, obviously that\u2019s what we want to avoid. No one wants to go down that road. Certainly, I know this team, with the leadership we have on it, and the guys want to go out and compete and get the job done down the home stretch here, very important to finish strong. And certainly we\u2019ve had a good week of practice but at the same time, we know we\u2019ve got got a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

Has Trevon Diggs done everything that you needed him to do to meet the standard to play<\/a> on Sunday?<\/p>\n

Jones: Yeah, I think he\u2019s certainly trending in the right direction. I mean, looks like that certainly could very well be the case, and I know he wants to get out there and compete. He\u2019s a competitor, and certainly trending that way. But we\u2019ll play that up to gametime and see where we go.<\/p>\n

Can you comment on Matt Eberflus moving to the coach\u2019s box<\/a> and why that decision was made and why that wasn\u2019t done earlier?<\/p>\n

Jones: Yeah, I think Matt historically has been comfortable on the sideline. I think as we\u2019ve evolved over the course of the season, we\u2019re looking for ways to improve. We thought we had made some good steps there, but the last couple games hadn\u2019t been as good. We\u2019re just looking for long term solutions, and certainly want to look at options. Coach Schottenheimer is the one who came up with the idea, and sat with coach Eberflus, and they came to the conclusion it\u2019d be a good idea.<\/p>\n

Troy Aikman made some comments earlier today about the front office\u2019s involvement with the coaching staff and he feels that should be all head coach decisions<\/a>. So does Schottenheimer get the final say when it comes to staff changes?<\/p>\n

Jones: No, I mean, I would say 99% of the time we go with what coach Schottenheimer and his staff want to go with. I mean, anytime you have ownership in anything, you obviously, if you\u2019re keeping up with anything in a responsible way, then you certainly want to know what\u2019s going on. But at the same time, you\u2019re also supportive of the people you put in place to make those decisions.<\/p>\n

If Schottenheimer wanted to make a change on the staff, he would run it by you guys and you would do the best you can to help him see that through, right?<\/p>\n

Jones: Yeah, guys, we\u2019re not going to get into theoreticals. We\u2019re worried about the upcoming game. We play the Chargers, and we\u2019ll continue to work hard and not only to beat the Chargers, but obviously to continue to take the next steps to make this a better football team as we go forward in the future.<\/p>\n

It was disappointing to hear the news about DaRon Bland<\/a>, any context you can add for us on how long or what the timeframe this injury could have?<\/p>\n

Jones: Yeah, I think he\u2019ll be fine for 2026. I think it should be something where he has a real chance to be ready to go for the minicamps and all of that, our guys will do a good job getting him ready, but I don\u2019t see any lingering thing other than pushing him into having a thorough off season with his rehab and hopefully be ready to go for all of our minicamps and things of that nature.<\/p>\n

\"Dallas<\/a>Five final thoughts about Cowboys-Chargers: Matt Eberflus makes a change and more<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cowboys have won their last two meetings with the Chargers, can they keep it going this week?<\/p>\n

\"Dallas<\/a>Cowboys planning adjustments vs. Chargers to see more George Pickens involvement<\/a><\/p>\n

The past two games has been the least productive two-week stretch for Pickens this season. <\/p>\n

\"Dallas<\/a>Does DaRon Bland injury open door for Cowboys to activate Trevon Diggs?<\/a><\/p>\n

Diggs, for a variety of reasons, hasn\u2019t played in a game since Oct. 12.<\/p>\n

Find more Cowboys coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the biggest storylines heading into the Cowboys\u2019 final three games of the season is defensive coordinator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[7581,1638,1044,102,113,104,103,2638,154,17183,8195,5152],"class_list":["post-94985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-brian-schottenheimer","tag-brief","tag-cowboys","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-jerry-jones","tag-sports","tag-stephen-jones","tag-trevon-diggs","tag-troy-aikman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}