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Jerry Jones: We will do better if Tyron Smith can’t play Sunday night

Dallas Cowboys v Minnesota Vikings

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - AUGUST 27: Tyron Smith #77 of the Dallas Cowboys during the game against the Minnesota Vikings on August 27, 2011 at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)

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The Eagles surely are excited about the prospect of facing Cowboys left tackle Chaz Green, if starter Tyron Smith’s back injury keeps him from facing the Eagles on Sunday night. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones vows improvement, if Tyron Smith can’t play.

“I’d like to hope that Tyron is back,” Jones told 105.3 The Fan in Dallas on Tuesday. “But I’ll assure you that we will have that, if Tyron is not back, we will personnel-wise as well as technique wise, we will do better.”

Obviously, they can’t do much worse.

“I think that we didn’t, we’ve got a term we say, ‘block them up,’ which almost sounds trite,” Jones said. “We just did not, not only assess, but execute as we would like to. And I think Jason Witten said it the best. It was a total zeroing in on one player, but it was a team concern, or a total team production activity that created it. Blocking takes a lot of people and it takes trying to get more hats on them so to speak than they’ve got on defense. And we weren’t able to get it done.”

The Cowboys left Green to largely fend for himself, without adjusting to give him help via tight ends or running backs. Also, the Cowboys didn’t select enough plays that rolled quarterback Dak Prescott away from the pressure generated by Adrian Clayborn, who racked up six sacks.

“We’ve assessed it pretty good, got a handle around technically what went wrong,” Jones said. “They play what we call a ‘wide nine’ technique, which basically puts those ends way outside, both of their defensive ends way outside. We don’t see that much. And we probably, on hindsight, will have probably alternate how we handle that if we had it to do over again.”

It actually could have been worse. Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz explained that belief to reporters on Tuesday.

“They might have taken more sacks in that game if Prescott hadn’t been able to get away,” Schwartz said. “Adrian Clayborn had another one in his hands. He might have had seven sacks in that game.”

If Smith doesn’t play on Sunday night against the Eagles, Philly fans will be hoping for a mirror image of the night from a decade ago when Winston Justice gave up six sacks to Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora.