ARLINGTON, Texas — A week ago, owner and general manager Jerry Jones was one of the key decision makers noting that the Dallas Cowboys had to and would improve on their embarrassing Week 2 loss to the New Orleans Saints. But now, as they head into a shortened Week 4, those improvements are still largely in the wind after losing their Week 3 game to the Baltimore Ravens.

Things spiraled out of control again as the defense failed to stop Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, while the offense continued to struggle in the red zone and generally tried to figure out how to score touchdowns — promising drives that were thwarted by a list of untimely penalties and a CeeDee Lamb fumble.

“It seemed like we couldn’t get out of our own way,” Jones said. “But it’s just a reminder of what this game is all about.”

The bright spot that exists this week, but was absent seven days earlier, is how the Cowboys came alive in all three phases of the fourth quarter, scoring three touchdowns, recovering an onside kick and forcing Jackson’s offense off the field on third down multiple times.

The late game nearly handed the Ravens their worst NFL loss of the season, but they needed one more stop to have a chance and couldn’t complete their comeback.

Jones sees the fourth quarter’s events as at least momentum and confidence to build on, given that the Cowboys scored more points in that quarter than they had in the previous 11 quarters combined.

“They can take something from what they showed at the end of that game and we can continue with that,” he said. “That’s at least a (good) taste in your mouth. We’re obviously sad for our fans that we’ve lost two games in a row here at home, but if things go the way you want them to, they can take something from what we had at the end, bottle it up and continue with it.”

That doesn’t mean he ignores what happened in the first 45 minutes of the game against Baltimore.

He expects improvement and there is at least something that gives him confidence that improvement is coming.

“No, I’m very disappointed that we got beat today,” Jones said. “Very disappointed. And there’s no way you can sugarcoat the fact that we got beat, and there were parts of the way we got beat that were really areas that we’ve got to get a lot better at. … We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’ve got time to do that kind of work and we’ve got a short week this week, but we’ve got to get started.

“That was disappointing… If you look at the whole thing, we were outclassed today.”

Now one game behind the Philadelphia Eagles with 14 games left in the regular season, they need to turn things around as quickly as possible to avoid finding themselves in a situation where they regret losing early games that could ultimately determine their playoff seeding or even their playoff fate.

Jones hopes confidence has returned to the team after what they nearly accomplished in the fourth quarter against the Ravens.

“It takes a lot of effort to go all day, play the way we played, shoot ourselves in the foot and then make a couple big plays,” he said. “It takes something to come back and put in that much effort at the end. That’s what I’m going to hang my hat on.

“I hope our fans will do that too.”