When you first look at Cowboys quarterback Brandon Weeden’s stats, they don’t look worthy of a benching: Weeden completed 72.4 percent of his passes and only threw two interceptions in his three starts. But Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says there’s more than meets the eye with Weeden.
Jones said on 105.3 The Fan that Weeden was too cautious, and the Cowboys need a quarterback who will take some chances. That’s what next week’s starter, Matt Cassel, will do.
“I think he’s also got experience in basically just stepping up in the pocket and making some plays,” Jones said of Cassel. “Now, he will, with that experience though, do something that Weeden was not doing. Weeden was so conservative, he was coached to be conservative to a degree, but he was not taking chances with that ball. Now, we know you can’t make plays if you don’t take some chances. So, we’ll see more of that. We could see the risk of that hit us a little bit, but hopefully we’ll be getting our share of them over on the defense with this group we’ve got.”
The problem, however, is that Cassel often takes too many chances and therefore throws too many interceptions. Jones acknowledged that he wanted Weeden’s safety-first approach, “until we didn’t win.” Now the Cowboys hope they can win with Cassel. As Jones said, “That’s why we got him.”