After the Dallas Cowboys’ disastrous defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, CeeDee Lamb appeared to go to war with all-encompassing owner Jerry Jones.
The point of contention? The sun.
Lamb got free in the end-zone for an easy touchdown in the second quarter but ran past the ball, closing his hands around nothing but air.
Speaking after the game, he blamed a bizarre defect in the Cowboys’ $1.2b AT&T Stadium.
“I couldn’t see the ball. Couldn’t see the ball, at all. The sun,” Lamb explained.
The state-of-the-art stadium was opened in 2009 with a retractable roof, an 80,000-seat capacity and walls of glass doors on either end of the venue.
On clear days, like Sunday when the Eagles trounced the Cowboys 34-6, the sun shines through the glass windows creating a severe glare that in Lamb’s eyes contributed to a missed touchdown.
“Yes. One thousand percent,” Lamb responded when asked if he would be in favor of adding curtains to shield the field from the sun.
That’s certainly not an opinion shared by Jones, who passionately defended his stadium following Sunday’s loss.
“Well let’s tear the damn stadium down and build another one?” Jones sarcastically responded. “Are you kidding me?”
“By the way, we know where the sun is going to be when we decide to flip the coin or not,” he added. “We do know where the damn sun is going to be in our own stadium.
“Everybody has got the same thing. Every team that comes in here has the same issues.”
Jones sees the glare as a competitive advantage and, of course, does not like to admit he could be wrong.
But it’s not just the floundering Cowboys who this could affect.
The Arlington-based stadium will host nine matches at the 2026 World Cup, including a semi-final, while it will also welcome this week’s Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul fight.
While there shouldn’t be an impact on the bout scheduled to start on Friday evening, goalkeepers are likely to be dealing with the havoc of the sun in 2026.
Most of all though, it’s an embarrassment for Jones and the Cowboys franchise as a whole who have one of the United States’ most impressive stadiums with a gigantic defect that is harming his team.
Nicknamed Jerry’s World, AT&T Stadium was intended as a gem in the US sports landscape, even being recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s largest HD digital scoreboard when it opened more than a decade ago.
That record has since been surpassed but more important is what it represented: Jones’ dream to build a new home for ‘America’s Team’ that would be the envy of the rest of the country.
Instead, a minor detail has turned Jerry’s World into a public mockery. Jones’ stubbornness ensures that changes are unlikely – even if his star wide receiver is desperate for one.
Speaking to local Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan on Monday, Jones reiterated his decision to keep the stadium as is.
“Of all the things that we need to improve, that is way down the list of improvement,” Jones said. “That stadium was built to feel like you’re outdoors.
“It’s the largest air-conditioned space in the world. My biggest thought when we were building it was make it look like it was outdoors.”
Perhaps increased publicity in the World Cup could cause some upheaval if nothing changes until then but as ever, when Jones is involved, you can never predict what will happen.
