Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones downplayed questions of head coach Mike McCarthy having potentially lost the team after falling to 3-7 following a 34-10 Monday Night Football loss to the Houston Texans.

"That losing the team stuff, that's so overblown," Jones said Monday (November 18) night after the game via ESPN. "These guys are so, first of all, they're natural competitors. Secondly, they're so proud of the fact that they are professional and disappointed in maybe the way they executed the play, but that's not anything that's brother or first cousin to give up. ... Everybody's certainly disappointed, but that's a big difference in not knowing that you got to put the foot in front of the other to go."

Jones acknowledged that the Cowboys won only one game during his first year as owner in 1989 and have "had other tough years." The current Cowboys team was, however, expected to be a contender, but has instead lost its first five home games of a season for the first time since 1989.

Dallas' current five-game losing streak is the longest since its seven-game skid in 2015.

"Explain it? I think it's very frustrating. It's frustrating for everybody. Frustrating for the players, frustrating for the coaches. I know it's disappointing for the fans," McCarthy said after the game via ESPN. "But we just, we have a lot of moving parts going on, and we just have to be cleaner and more detailed in certain spots. We're not playing well enough, not executing well enough, coaching well enough to overcome some of the mistakes we're making in critical times of the game."

McCarthy, 61, who won Super Bowl XLV with the Green Bay Packers, has gone 45-31 in five seasons with the Cowboys, which includes making the postseason three times, however, going 1-3 in that span.

Mike Mittman