Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones admires the way the New York Giants managed to peak at the right moment, and he wishes his team had done the same.
"(The Giants are) just like the Green Bay Packers were last year, in a different way," Jones said Monday, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "They're a real inspiration of, frankly, what I had hoped that we were going to be, and that is a team that had played, had good days and bad days, but then near the end really took off on a run and then really made improvement. They did it, and we didn't. We went the other way."
The Cowboys lost two games to the Giants in the last month of the season to finish 8-8, while New York won the NFC East with a 9-7 record, then went 3-0 in the NFC playoffs for the second time in five years to reach the Super Bowl.
Speaking to reporters after the first Senior Bowl practice in Mobile, Ala., Jones singled out quarterback Tony Romo for praise but said the rest of his team fell short.
"We had good quarterback play," he said. "But I'd say as a team, they just got better and better near the end."
Jones didn't sound confident that the Cowboys could have done much even had they made the playoffs.
"We didn't play good enough to compete or play at this level, and I don't know that we would have been competing, had we gotten in the playoffs, at the level the Giants are," Jones said. "I thought Romo was competing at a level that would have given us that opportunity, but the rest of us need to play better and get better before we can be really gelling the way the Giants are."
