Cowboys set to play Panthers without Barber

CHARLOTTE, NC — The Dallas Cowboys are playing a crucial road game this weekend, but will be doing so without Marion Barber III, who missed the team plane and will not be playing in the game.

According to reports from Dallas, Barber was supposed to be picked up for the airport by Julius Jones, with whom he is competing for playing time. However, Jones never showed up to give Barber a ride.

“Hmmmm, I must’ve forgotten to pick him up,” Jones said when asked about the reports. “I had meant to – I swear to you, I had. But I was so caught up in thinking about what I need to do on my seven carries Saturday that I must have let picking up our Pro Bowl running back slip my mind.”

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Barber apparently realized that Jones may have forgotten him when he hadn’t shown up with just an hour and a half left before the plane was scheduled to take off, and repeatedly phoned and text-messaged Jones. Jones did not answer, and claimed later that he’d “forgotten his cell phone at home.”

When asked why he didn’t call a cab, Barber indicated that he tried. Apparently, when he came to the Cowboys, Jones gave him a list of “all the good cab companies in Dallas,” but they were all wrong numbers.

“Most of them were numbers to pizza places, and one of them was a number to a martial arts dojo,” Barber said. “None of them were cab companies at all. It was a little weird.”

Jones was apparently also to blame for making it impossible for Barber to simply drive himself to the airport.

“Well, I had let Julius borrow my cars,” Barber said. “Julius said he wanted to practice driving different cars, to see what they felt like. So he has both of them right now at his house. I guess he just didn’t have time to bring them back.”

The Cowboys have a strict policy that if a player misses a flight, he does not get to play in the game, so even if Barber makes it to Charlotte, he will not see the field. Which is a shame for the Cowboys, since Tony Romo is hobbled with Jessica Simpson-related injuries and Terrell Owens is mired in a late season slump.

“What are you going to do?” Jones asked. “I guess I just have to carry the load on Saturday. It appears that this is just a series of badly timed events. A perfect storm of misfortune, if you will. I’m just sorry that I’m going to have to go it alone on Saturday. I really love having Marion out there with me.”