Sunday’s report that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and defensive tackle Jay Ratliff had a heated altercation in the team’s locker room after the Week 13 win over the Eagles has been confirmed.
During his typically wide-reaching weekly radio show, Jones confirmed that he and Ratliff exchanged words after Jones told Ratliff, who has been plagued by injuries this season, that the Cowboys needed to have him on the field. This rubbed Ratliff the wrong way and others had to intervene in what was described as a “volcanic” confrontation between the two men.
“Well, you’ve heard the old deal, ‘What goes on in there, stays in there.’ Obviously it didn’t,” Jones said on KRLD, via the Dallas Morning News. “I think the world of Jay and I think of him as a competitor. I know how hard he’s worked to be where he is. Jay has had injuries this year that are just mind-boggling, considering the player that he’s been for us. We let the emotion of the game the other day get to us, but that’s just the way things work sometime. He wants to win. He wants to do everything he can for the team, and that’s the way I want it.”
Coach Jason Garrett said that Ratliff faced no discipline as a result of the incident, which means that the team can now focus on getting him healthy enough to help their playoff push over the final three weeks of the regular season. Jones called Ratliff “doubtful” for this week’s game, which could mean the resolution on this front is slower to come than the resolution of the angry words from a couple of weeks ago.