Cowboys @ Cardinals: What They're Saying (The Early Version)

It's not exactly how we pictured this would go, we didn't know how Dallas would play on Saturday but six turnovers in one game certainly wasn't part of the plan. This is the kind of game you can think about in a few different ways. One thought - they won't have this bad of a game on offense again this preseason or season. Good thing to cough it up in the preseason. Or maybe you take it as a teaching lesson, get casual with the ball and you get burned. Or you can just say forget what happened on offense, at least the defense came through in a big way. What are the Cowboys saying? Depending on who you talk to, you get a little bit of it all.

Jason Garrett on just the first half:

"Obviously five turnovers is inexcusable," said head coach Jason Garrett. "It happened on offense with fumbles and interceptions and happened in the kicking game with fumbles. I thought our defense did a very good job in the sudden change situations, holding them to field goals. To think you turned it over five times and only gave them nine points is pretty impressive."

Let's take the turnovers path with Dez Bryant:

"I feel like we came out and performed extremely well. Besides the fumbles, everything was great out there. When we get back to practice, I need to make sure I have that ball high and tight, not have it loose and keep it safe so we can go down and get to another play. Again, besides the fumbles, I think we have done extremely well. We were playing explosive, but there's always room to get better."

Stephen Jones:

"We've done a good job in training camp really trying to get our defense to work on getting the ball. Obviously we going to have to go back to the drawing board on protecting the ball," he said in a halftime interview on the Cowboys television broadcast. "You've got to protect the ball in these games. If you lose the turnover battle in the regular season, you usually lose."

Jason Witten:

"We spent a lot of time in the off-season talking about how we can’t turn the ball over," Jason Witten said on CBS 11. "Four turnovers in the first half is just too much to overcome. That was disappointing. We got to work on that.

"We got to get it fixed, and in a hurry, too."

So there's not much you can say, you have to just wait and see if this was a one game blip, or if Dallas is going to have a case of the yips.

On the other subject, the defense, things are much more upbeat.

Brandon Carr:

"For the first defense, we got some good work in today. We had a passing attack offense that we had to prepare for all week. They gave us some different looks, tried to run some screens, tried to run the ball to soften us up. They got a couple of big plays on us but we made the tackle and still tried to work the ball out. Still have to work on some little things but overall when we get down in the redzone, we don't allow touchdowns, we give them field goals. We will trade them field goals for touchdowns. But overall guys are out there competing and hustling."

Sean Lee:

"I thought we had a couple good plays," Lee said during the CBS 11 broadcast. "We obviously have room to improve. We have to find a way to get more turnovers. We pride ourselves on getting turnovers. If we want to be a great defense, we got to - even in a short amount of plays - find a way to get a turnover."

OK, so how about a couple of random subjects like Stephen Jones on Alex Tanney.

"He's shown a little bit of Romo to him," Jones said in a halftime interview on the Cowboys television broadcast. "He's got a little game to him. What we hope to see is, he will let go of the ball. Hopefully, he'll come in here in the second half and make some plays for us and really show up here today. We'd love to see that and maybe get our offense untracked here a little bit."

He does have that escapability that Romo possesses, and he likes to run like Romo did when he was a younger man. He also directed a nice drive for Dallas' only score.

Here's Jerry on the breakdown of negotiations between Dallas and Brian Waters.

"It takes two and probably both are not getting it done," Jones said. "I think that is the fairest way to look at it."

The Cowboys appear content to stay pat despite the fact that Ron Leary, Nate Livings and Kevin Kowalski are currently sidelined with knee injuries.

"Unless," Jones said, "something should present itself."

A source close to Waters said, "Brian would play this season under the right set of circumstances."

So looks like Dallas won't up its offer and Waters isn't coming down on what he wants, so no deal.