The Cowboys decided to open the roof of AT&T Stadium days before Monday night’s game against the Texans. What they didn’t take into account was the cold front that blew through Arlington Monday morning.

The area experienced wind gusts of 30 km per hour on Monday afternoon and stronger earlier in the day.

As stadium operators began to open the roof more than two hours before the game, a piece of metal fell from the roof onto the sideline. No one was injured.

“I’ll tell you right now what you had: you had heavy winds in this area during the day and apparently right at the time we opened it and before the wind had affected part of the roof, and then we opened it. “Well, then it had that stretch, the wind took it and got underneath it,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said after the game. “Rest assured, all of that stuff is done out of the reach of a fan, customer or anyone else.”

The roof hadn’t been open in more than two years — since a game against the Bears on Oct. 30, 2022 — and the team planned to have the retractable end zone doors open for last week’s game against the Eagles, but they couldn’t be fully opened, ESPN’s Todd Archer reports.

Monday’s match was ultimately played with the roof closed.

“The wind apparently did some damage and when we tried to open it up, that’s when the wind came under the roof,” Jones said. “Everyone agreed it did some damage. But look around, Dallas had gusty winds all afternoon. They call them wind something, wind bursts or something like that. That’s the kind of thing that ultimately caused that damage, apparent damage, and we were aware of it when we opened the (roof) a few hours before the game and had planned at the time we saw that not to open the roof.

Another piece of loose metal stuck in a walkway had to be bolted down before the game was allowed to start on time.

“They wouldn’t have done this game or started it if there was any risk at all,” Jones said. “Not only would the NFL not do that, but I wouldn’t do that either if there was any risk at all. And there was no risk at all when we started the match.”

Jones said the roof is “repairable.”

AT&T Stadium opened in 2009 and has only had its roof open and its retractable end zone doors closed seven times.

On May 2, 2009, the Cowboys’ indoor practice facility at their old training facility in Irving collapsed. Wind shear, just under the force of a hurricane, ripped through the bubble during a rookie minicamp. Eleven people were injured.