Take a Bow, Jerry—the Dallas Cowboys Flamed Out Again

Take a Bow, Jerry—the Dallas Cowboys Flamed Out Again

Following the most recent postseason loss of the Dallas Cowboys,

Jerry Jones didn’t even bother to resort to one of his customary word salads.

His usual cryptic answers to questions from reporters were no longer there.

Sportswriters were left wondering if the owner of the Cowboys was going to fire

the team’s head coach or order a big pepperoni.

This time, Jones’s unwavering optimism gave way to an uncommon

display of dejection following Sunday’s 48–32 home playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers.

He remarked, “This one’s burned into our souls out here tonight.” “To our followers,

I say this: you deserve so much better than this conclusion for us….

We all had high hopes for this team and such high expectations, so this seems like the most agonising [defeat].

For Cowboys fans of a particular age, this is the norm: in 28 seasons since winning Super Bowl XXX on January 28,

1996, the team has only managed five postseason victories, all of them in the Wild Card round.

All of that former greatness, including twenty winning seasons in a row,

five Super Bowl trophies, and the Ring of Honour,

is now nothing more than faded memories and ticket stubs from a bygone era.

The Dallas Cowboys of 2024 are the most amazing sports team in North America in this sense.

Even if they lose badly in the playoffs, the team would still be worth $9 billion,

according to the most recent estimate from Forbes,

making it the most valuable sports franchise in the world.

In a sport that commands television viewership unlike any other,

the Cowboys lead in profitability—the one metric that matters more than victories and defeats these days.

The stars of the Cowboys, such as Roger and Drew in the 1970s and 1980s,

Troy and Emmitt in the 1990s, and Dak and Micah in the present, simply require their first names.

Since purchasing the team in 1989 with an initial investment of $140 million,

Jones has built a vast empire consisting of silver helmets and real estate.

Nevertheless, he will never have what he most desires as he approaches his eighty-second birthday.

Though he’s a marketing and branding whiz,

his true ambition is to be revered as a football guy, respected for his ability to assemble teams,

spot talent, and select coaches.

Rather, Cowboys fans have become accustomed to their team’s stunning collapses in the playoffs.

Nevertheless, the disaster this past weekend felt much more depressing than previous postseason

blowouts because the Dallas loss was such a comprehensive thrashing

that Jones was forced to make a lot of important choices.

Despite Mike McCarthy’s two division titles and three straight postseason berths in his four seasons as head coach,

he is likely to fire him. McCarthy was appointed because Jason Garrett,

his predecessor, had only two postseason victories in over nine years.

McCarthy’s Cowboys career postseason victory total is one.

Following the defeat, McCarthy remarked, “We chose the wrong day to have a bad day.”

It seems that nobody anticipated this… Every male is sad and disappointed.

Over the last three seasons, only the Kansas City Chiefs have won more regular-season games (37) than

the Cowboys (36)—but the Chiefs have also won a Super Bowl and are

just one win away from making it to the AFC Championship Game for the third time in a row.

The Cowboys had a sixteen-game winning run at home when they on the pitch at AT&T Stadium on Sunday.

Out of 32 NFL teams, they were the only ones to rank in the top five both defensively and offensively at

the end of the regular season.

Dak Prescott, the quarterback, topped the NFL with 36 touchdown passes.

With 135 receptions, wide receiver CeeDee Lamb also topped the league.

Star pass rusher Micah Parsons regularly had two or three blockers thrown his way,

yet he finished sixth in sacks (fourteen).

And then on the sport’s biggest stage, the one that defines legacies,

Dallas’s three biggest stars were practically no-shows,

and the Cowboys found themselves trailing by 32 points in the fourth quarter.

They gave up more points than the franchise had ever allowed in a playoff game,

and wound up being the only home team to lose in the NFL postseason’s opening weekend.

Fans on social media gleefully pointed out that the Packers now

have more all-time playoff victories at AT&T Stadium than the Cowboys.

In a first half in which the Packers scored the first 27 points and took a 27–7 lead into halftime,

Prescott had 87 passing yards and two interceptions, one of those returned for a touchdown.

He’s 2–5 in the playoffs and has performed poorly in the Cowboys’ last three playoff losses.

The last time he threw two first-half interceptions came in last year’s playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

Lamb had two catches and two drops in a half-hearted first half in which Green Bay nicely disguised its defensive schemes. Television cameras caught both Prescott and McCarthy attempting to talk the wide receiver out of his funk. Parsons? He had zero sacks and zero tackles for losses as Green Bay blanketed him with multiple blockers.

Until the Cowboys add another pass-rushing threat, this will be Parsons’s new normal.

“It’s a shock,’’ Prescott said after the game. “Damn sure didn’t think this is where we’d be. . . .

It’ll take a little bit more time to digest it completely.”

“I sucked tonight,” he told reporters. Asked why he’d been unable to carry his regular season success into the playoffs, he paused for several seconds.

“I mean, it’s tough to give you that answer when we went out there—when I went out there—and we just did that,’’ he replied.

“Unfortunately, that’s what the offseason is for. It’s a long one.’’

Is McCarthy responsible for the collective failure? Sure, he is. Even McCarthy admitted the Cowboys came out flat, which is inexcusable for a win-or-go-home playoff matchup. Head coaches are responsible for scheming up a game plan that will allow their players to perform at their best, and that aspect of the job will be front and center if (more like when) Jones winds up hiring a new coach this offseason. (That would be the Cowboys’ eighth head coach since Jones fired Jimmy Johnson after the 1993 championship season.) Coaches are easy to replace,

but finding a quarterback to perform at the level Prescott has reached in

the regular season is easily the hardest thing for an NFL franchise to achieve.

Jones knows this and will be hoping and praying that some combination of a new coach, a different voice,

and a different mindset will assist Prescott in translating his regular-season prowess into playoff success.

The Cowboys have no other choice but to run it back with Dak.

There are no easy answers for a team that looks like world-beaters for much of the regular season and

then falls flat in the playoffs.

And don’t even bother suggesting that Jones cede the roster-building duties to a full-time general manager.

It’ll never happen. The Dallas Cowboys are the Jerry Jones Show,

and it’s nearly impossible to imagine him ever relinquishing one iota of control over the franchise.

Jones may never have been the meddler some have portrayed him to be.

The Cowboys have an excellent personnel man in Will McClay,

who oversees the draft and has a large voice in every roster move.

He convinced Jones to draft Prescott in the fourth round and has a string of excellent first-round selections in Lamb,

Parsons, offensive lineman Tyler Smith, linebacker Leighton Vander Esch, and others.

But over the years, through his actions and decisions, Jones has proven that when it comes to America’s Team,

he wants the credit—all of it. Even if that means taking credit for thirty years of disappointing

the largest fan base in professional football.

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