Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb blamed the sun getting in his eyes when he failed to catch a pass on Sunday at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, leading to a great deal of discussion about why an indoor stadium like the one the Cowboys play in has windows that allow sunlight to shine in players’ eyes. But Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says that sunlight is to his team’s advantage.
Jones says that with more experience playing in their own stadium than any opposing team has, the Cowboys should be better prepared for the sun and more likely to be able to adjust to it than their opponents.
“That really goes under the category of home-field advantage,” Jones said. “It should be an advantage to the home team, so I don’t want to adjust it for one reason because it is an advantage to us. . . . That’s our advantage. That should be our advantage. We get to play there more and we get to have it as an advantage. It has been an advantage for us to know where the sun is. I don’t want to change that.”
So why wasn’t it an advantage against the Eagles on Sunday? Jones suggested that it was in part because Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore played for the Cowboys for three years and was on their coaching staff for four years and could prepare the Eagles for it.
“Kellen Moore knew about it,” Jones said. “He spent, I’m sure he spent a lot of time — their coordinator, who used to be here — I’m sure he spent a lot of time planning and thinking about where the sun is going to be. He should.”
Jones said he likes how the stadium has the comfort of being inside but an outdoor feel, and he wouldn’t want to block out the sunlight and change that outdoor feel.
“It’s the largest air-conditioned space in the world, the stadium,” Jones said. “It has over 3 million cubic feet of air conditioned space. My biggest thought when we were building it was, Don’t have it look like it’s not outdoors. Make it look like it’s outdoors.”
Jones said the Cowboys have a lot of problems, but the sun isn’t one of them.
“Of all the things that we all need to improve, that is way down the list of improvement,” Jones said. “That stadium was built to feel like it’s outdoors when you’re indoors, and it was built to have sunlight coming in.”
