Cowboys Coach Christian Parker Offered Brutal Checklist From Stephen Jones

The Dallas Cowboys have done a lot of soul-searching during their mini-bye after the disaster that was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game.

Head coach Brian Schottenheimer has stated that changes would be coming, and they already have.

Long-time coordinator Mike Pettine has been hired as a sounding board for Christian Parker after yet another defensive horror show, as 2-3 Dallas searches for answers as to why this defense, hyped to within an inch of its life in the preseason, has fallen flat.

Struggles to stop the run, struggles to not allow every quarterback to look like an All-Pro, the missed tackles, it all adds up to Dallas having another defense that is one of the worst in football.

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Any way you want to slice this, Parker's defense has been bad.

Cowboys COO Stephen Jones, who was on 105.3 The Fan, delivered a brutal truth about the state of Parker's defense five weeks in.

"I think the fundamentals are a big part of this," Jones said. "It's not only just missed tackles, it's play style, it's intensity, it's identity, it's making plays when you need to make plays. I think all these things come into play when you talk about ultimately putting a product, a defensive team, on the field that can go out and help you win football games.

"Obviously, we hadn't done that up to now. We have to tackle better, our play style has to be better, we have to make plays on the ball, we have to get to the quarterback. All these things I think play into us ultimately having a defense that can help us win football games."

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Well, that is quite the whack, isn't it?

Jones has just rattled off, with ease, everything that ails this defense through five weeks, and that in itself is rather damning.

Now, with the mini-bye gone and a Sunday night visit to Green Bay on the horizon, the Cowboys have to find a way to point this ship in the right direction and patch the hull.

Stephen outlined everything that has been wrong with the defense over the past five weeks, and now that the Cowboys know what has gone wrong, how they fix it will be a fascinating watch.

Because making changes like Dallas has is one thing. 

But if it doesn't translate into positive results, then we have grave concerns over what that likely means for the young, hot-shot coordinator in Parker.