Jerry Jones opens up about what Monday Night Football win over Chargers means for Mike McCarthy

There’s nothing like winning to improve the mood of an NFL owner. And Jerry Jones certainly was happier with the Mike McCarthy and the Cowboys offense.

In a dramatic game, the Cowboys beat the Chargers, 20-17, at SoFi Stadium in front of a national audience on Monday Night Football. Plus, Jerry Jones likes the attention. So we’re betting he was even more pleased with the TV audience numbers. More than 19.7 million people watched the game, making it the fifth largest audience for a MNF contest in the ESPN era, which started in 2006.

Earlier this week, Jones gave his thoughts on the win in a standing interview with a Dallas radio station. He gave props to McCarthy.

“It was a very, very important win for Mike,” Jerry Jones said. “This offense has a lot of room to be more impactful and more effective, and he got some of it at times there last night, Mike did.”

Here’s how McCarthy viewed the game. ‘It was gritty, but it wasn’t pretty,” the head coach told reporters once the team arrived back in Dallas.

The Cowboys needed the win if only to rid themselves of a week-long hangover caused by the 42-10 loss to the 49ers. Dak Prescott described it as a “must win.”

“There’s a big difference between 4-2 and 3-3,” Prescott said. “We talked after last week about not allowing this thing to landslide. When you get this win like we did, we can definitely move on.”

Now, the Cowboys can relax some through the bye week and look forward to a home game against the Rams.

“To me, this season is really broken up into trimesters this year, the way it’s fallen; and we’ve just completed our first one as we get ready for this next run,” McCarthy said.. “We’ve been on the road four out of six games. It’ll be fun to be home and play in front of our crowd. … Speaking to the coordinators, I think the description yesterday was the best: ‘It was gritty but it wasn’t pretty.’

“You guys like pretty and that’s part of wearing the Star, but the gritty part is, to me, that’s our foundation. That’s something we need to continue to build off of.”

McCarthy explained that all players are encouraged this week to attend the meetings of other position groups. The Cowboys call it the “Across the Hall” series.

And no doubt, McCarthy likely will speak with his boss, Jerry Jones. It’s all about self scouting during the bye week.

“We do need to clean some things up,” McCarthy said. “The pre-snap penalties … I think [correcting those] is part of being a team and going through the ebb and flow … We just need to continue to find ways to be creative, demanding but making sure we’re stressing the correct things coming out of this bye.”