The Dallas Cowboys are continuing to find new lows to subject us to.
The Dallas Cowboys lost to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday afternoon, and perhaps the most frustrating thing about where they are as a franchise right now is that it was a loss to the Eagles of all teams, and we (generally speaking) felt nothing.
Losses to the Eagles are supposed to sit with us and irk us and make us so mad that we say ridiculous things in our fits of rage. This is sports in a nutshell. Our passions drive us to intense emotional places because of how much we love the teams in question.
Unfortunately, the Cowboys have done just about everything in their power to neuter that sort of thing these days. Philadelphia won, laughed in the process and celebrated on their way out of town all while the Cowboys made NFL history by becoming the first team ever to trail by at least 20 points in five consecutive home games.
That streak obviously dates back to the playoff loss last year against the Green Bay Packers, the surest sign that things were going to unravel for this group. Think about what it must be like to be a Packers fan these days, by the way. Your team is contending and finding ways to win in spite of difficult circumstances all while your little brothers are still trying to figure out who they are almost a full year after you reminded them the unnerving answer to that question.
Dallas Cowboys games are simply things that happen nowadays, not passionate rituals or battles that we live and die with.
Here are three thoughts on the latest Thing That Happened with a day to reflect.
It is hard to remember the last good thing that happened to this team
To be clear I know the answer here, but you need to properly understand the question first.
What I am asking is for the last time in which you felt pure, absolute joy for the Dallas Cowboys. It is my belief that the answer is/was December 30th of last year. It was on that fateful Saturday night that the universe apparently decided we had had enough joy.
You see on that night Jimmy Johnson took his rightful place in the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor and the Cowboys were on the right side of a definitely-suspect officiating call while facing the Detroit Lions. As a result of that game, and the week that followed, the Cowboys were NFC East Champions and the #2 seed in the entire conference. That win meant that much and that it came on Jimmy’s night, also the evening in which CeeDee Lamb set the receiving records that he did, made it all feel like destiny.
While the Cowboys did win their next game, for the most part that was the beginning of our current doom. Shortly after Jimmy laughed with Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith on the floor of AT&T Stadium, the Green Bay Packers laughed in the playoffs as they made the Cowboys the first number two seed to lose in the Wild Card Round (only a possibility since 2021) in NFL history.
After that? There was all-in, no free agency, talk about Ezekiel Elliott, actually bringing Zeke back, a suspect-ish draft, delay after delay on extensions, signing the extensions in question to the ridiculous numbers they had reached when they didn’t have to and, oh yea, literally all of this season.
We have been crawling through this mud for a long time now and figuring out when it ends is sort of impossible.
Reality is that there is nothing that can be done midseason to fix this
You do not have to look far to find the suggestion. There are many people who believe that the Cowboys should fire Mike McCarthy.
I’d like to make myself very clear in noting that I am in no way advocating for or defending McCarthy given, um, you know, everything about this season, but allow me to ask another question, please.
What good does firing Mike McCarthy do now?
This team is out at sea. Breaking the engine of the boat or throwing the life preserver, if you want to equate this head coach to either of those things, accomplishes nothing in the big and overall picture. I understand the want for something to be done to represent that somebody, anybody in charge of this operation cares or feels the level of frustration that we do, but what comes next if you want McCarthy out? Mike Zimmer takes over? That’s the knight in shining armor?
I’ve asked this question on social media and mostly gotten responses about how a firing would represent that the team is not willing to stand for this and that it could instill some accountability in the roster. Hold up. You mean the roster that watched the front office send McCarthy and most of his staff into a contract year in the first place? Nobody is going to bat an eye if the Cowboys fire McCarthy because they saw what we all did when this thing was cleared on the runway for takeoff.
The unfortunate reality is that we are stuck here. We have run two miles in one direction and have to run them back in order to return home. It is then and only then that we can start to try and pick up the pieces from this whole thing in the name of the required improvement.
The lack of a true north star is the most disconcerting thing at the moment
One of the most frustrating things about the offseason for the Cowboys was that they did not point all of their efforts into one common direction. I’ll explain.
You will not struggle to find an article or several that I wrote where I encouraged the front office to extend Dak Prescott. A large part of my point was that if the franchise was set on inevitably doing so that doing so as soon as possible was in the best interest of the team. We have explained the logic behind this several times.
I bring this up not to incite debates about Dak Prescott but because the front office waited until the last possible day to get the Dak deal done as it happened on the Sunday that the season began. CeeDee Lamb didn’t take quite as long, but for all practical matters he did. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the team took care of the two most important (an arguable point) things that they had to do over the entire offseason until the last moment.
Again, I will reiterate that there was a lack of a common goal, a lack of a north star. If the Cowboys truly knew that they were going to get those deals done then they should have done so ASAP so that they could have taken care of other things with the salary cap space that the moves created. Alternatively if the Cowboys were truly skeptical then they should have committed to not doing these things and been ready to live with the consequences. Either one of those course of action is a common goal, a common north star.
You cannot chase multiple north stars as an NFL team. There are barely enough resources and points of energy to follow one which is why who Dallas is at the moment is not at all hard to figure out. What’s more is that they had an opportunity last week to re-define who and what their north star was with the trade deadline approaching. The Cowboys could have decided to sell off certain players in the name of accruing assets to use with the directive of finding their true north star. What did they do instead, though? They burned a fourth-round pick that is likely going to be near the top 100 for a player who will have half of the years of team control relative to the player that the selection is ultimately used on.
The Cowboys are not going anywhere. They are not even standing still. The Cowboys are actively doing whatever they feel like doing how and whenever they feel like doing it, north stars or common goals be damned. Sadly, we are all strapped along for the ride.
