IRVING, Texas -- Saying he left more meat on the bone, Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said he made a mistake at the end of his team's 31-29 Sunday afternoon loss to the Baltimore Ravens.

In the closing seconds of Sunday's game, Garrett called for a pass play to wide receiver Dez Bryant, which was completed for one yard with 22 seconds left. Instead of spiking the ball or using their last timeout, the Cowboys waited until six seconds remained before calling a timeout.

Dan Bailey missed a game-winning 51-yard field goal with two seconds left that sealed the victory for the Ravens.

Garrett's mishandling of the last few seconds raised several questions about his ability to manage a game. He spent the first 10 minutes of his 33 minute Monday afternoon news conference explaining his thoughts about what happened.

"When we look at that situation, the evaluation is that we need to do a better job in that situation," Garrett said. "That starts with me just executing and getting more out of that situation. If you look at where we are on the field, how many timeouts we have left and what we're trying to get accomplished. We understood we were in field goal range at that time. We felt good about the distance and that Dan Bailey could kick the ball. Having said that, we wanted to get closer."

What also made the situation bad was a lack of urgency from the players on the field following the pass to Bryant. Garrett's play call sent receivers Miles Austin and Kevin Ogletree down the field and Bryant on a slant. After the completion, Ogletree and Austin were walking back to the line of scrimmage and Bryant was arguing with the referee. The offensive linemen were moving toward Bryant and possibly to the spot of the ball.

"We make the field goal and lot of this controversy is gone," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Tuesday morning on his radio show on KRLD-FM. "I have obviously had the benefit of hindsight. We all have. We called a play that had been going very good for us. I liked the play call.

"As far as urgency and getting back to the line, or what have you, we're not going to try and defend that. Everybody needs to be really scrambling and moving back at a fast pace out there during that time. It's unfortunate."

Garrett said communication was a big part in what went wrong after the pass play. He didn't offer an excuse, rather calling it an explanation. He even mentioned crowd noise as a factor.