Dallas Cowboys free safety Darian Stewart (20) scores a touchdown pressured by Washington Redskins defensive back DeAngelo Hall (23) in the 4th quarter at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland on December 7, 2015. The Cowboys defeated the Redskins 19-16. Photo by Molly Riley/UPI | License Photo

Dallas Cowboys kicker Dan Bailey (5) celebrates his game winning field goal against the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland on December 7, 2015. The Cowboys defeated the Redskins 19-16. Photo by Molly Riley/UPI | License Photo

IRVING, Tex. - Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was openly critical of head coach Jason Garrett and his staff following Monday's victory against the Redskins. Jones blamed Garrett for not getting wide receiver Dez Bryant more involved in the game plan early on and also the clock management at the end of the game.

He said the Cowboys "won on will, not tactical mastery."


Jones took the opportunity to express his disappointment that the coaching staff wasn't able to figure out a way to win without quarterback Tony Romo until Monday. The Cowboys have lost seven straight games this season without Romo until Matt Cassel broke through against the Redskins.

"I am stunned that we haven't been able to win more games without Tony," said Jones, who signed Garrett to a five-year, $30 million extension last offseason.

"And I would have thought that we could have coached it up enough, and put it together enough, that we would not have lost those games without Romo early. We would be in better shape than we are right now."

--Garrett found himself needing to explain the poor clock management decisions at the end of Monday's 19-16 victory against the Washington Redskins that almost got away from the Cowboys.


When the Cowboys recovered a fumble at the Washington 15 with 1:26 left in the game and the scored tied 9-9, conventional wisdom suggested they would milk the clock, force the Redskins to use their timeouts and kick a game-winning field goal with minimal time left on the clock.

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However things went awry when running back Darren McFadden inexplicably allowed himself to be pushed out of bounds following a 9-yard run on first down, stopping the clock.

"You should never go out of bounds in that situation, and what happened was the ball bounced and I think Darren was trying to get back up the field and they did a good job of pushing him out of bounds," Garrett said. "He has to get that left foot in the ground and go north and south, even if he's not going to make as many yards. But that's what happened in the game, and we had to respond the right way."

It was second-and-1, but the Redskins had two timeouts left. The Cowboys, who failed on a couple of short-yardage situations earlier in the game, had to focus on getting the first down. There was a consideration of instructing McFdadden to get the first down and then go down short of the goal line.

But the adrenaline was flowing and McFadden scored on a 9-yard run.

"Now, in that situation the nine yards is good, but keeping the clock running is paramount and we didn't do that," Garrett said. "So it's second-and-1 and they still have their two timeouts, so the thinking becomes, 'We need to get the first down now.' If we run it, they call timeout; we run it, they call timeout. All of a sudden we're kicking a field goal and they get it back and we're up three with over a minute, and in this league teams go down the field and kick game-tying field goals in those situations. So it was incumbent upon us to make a first down after that.


"We had a good discussion about how we should approach that next part of it. We have a play in place where you say, 'Make the first down, but don't score the touchdown.' We work on that a lot. In my mind, what we wanted to do was play football at that point. We felt like they were going to play football. One of the reasons we thought they were going to play football is they had some success in short-yardage situations earlier. Sometimes, when you get in that mode, 'OK make the first but don't score,' what happens is you don't come off the ball, you don't make the first. So what we wanted to do, given what we thought they would do to try to play defense, we wanted to come off and have our best football play. What happened was we scored a touchdown on it.

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"Ideally in that situation you want to bleed it all the way down and not give them the chance to come back the other way."

McFadden scored with 1:14 left, giving the Redskins enough time to tie the game again on a 28-yard touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson.

The Cowboys survived because Dan Bailey kicked a 54-yard, game-winning field goal with nine seconds left.

Notes: Kicker Dan Bailey hit four field goals against the Redskins to mark his 20th career game with three or more field goals - second-most all-time in franchise history. It was also his sixth career game with four or more field goals - most in franchise history - and was his 10th career game-winning kick, most in team history. ... Tight end Jason Witten caught five passes for 45 yards. Witten's five receptions gave him 1,003 for his career and allowed him to become the 12th player in NFL history - second tight end - to reach 1,000 career catches. By reaching that mark in his 203rd game, he became the sixth-fastest player in NFL history - fastest tight end - to reach that mark.