The Dallas Cowboys have been dethroned atop the NFL playoff appearances mountain.
Maybe you did not watch the game on Monday night. It is the week of Christmas, after all. Perhaps you were spending time with family or out getting a last-minute gift. It is possible that the Dallas Cowboys being mathematically eliminated from playoff contention on Sunday afternoon (before they soundly beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) soured you from wanting to watch football. We have all been there.
You didn’t miss much on Monday night. Outside of Troy Aikman and Joe Buck offering the most reasoned take on the College Football Playoff so far, the Green Bay Packers provided the football world with the first shutout of the season (it took until Week 16!) as they kept the New Orleans Saints from scoring a single point. In the process of their victory the Packers clinched a playoff appearance on the season.
It was the Packers who broke the Cowboys beyond complete recognition with a victory in the first round of last year’s playoff tournament. Green Bay demolished Dallas in the Wild Card Round and the Cowboys took almost the entire calendar year of 2024 to regain even a remote semblance of themselves.
How is the Packers’ recent playoff appearance related to the Cowboys, though? While Green Bay is moving on and Dallas is not, what is significant about it is that the Packers have now passed the Cowboys for the most playoff appearances in NFL history.
With the Packers clinching a playoff berth tonight, they take the lead over the Cowboys for the most postseason appearances in NFL history with 37. pic.twitter.com/SvO3fdnjNy
— Aaron Nagler (@AaronNagler) December 24, 2024
Older fans of the Cowboys will know and remember that at one point in time the Dallas Cowboys were the playoffs. Consider that as the Cowboys hoisted the Lombardi Trophy following Super Bowl XXX that they had appeared in eight Super Bowls and an incredible 23 playoffs overall.
Super Bowl XXX obviously includes part of the Jerry Jones ownership and he will certainly be the target of many people and their criticism for something like this. If we examine the Jones ownership era specifically consider that this season is the 18th in which his team will not play in the postseason. Amazingly, they are now a perfect .500 in terms of playoff appearances since 1989 when Jerry took over: 18 playoff years, 18 non-playoff years.
The Packers have now reached the playoffs 24 times since 1989 just so we can consider things as much apples to apples as possible. The amazingly weird coincidence of it all obviously is that Mike McCarthy has served as the center of playoff appearances for both the Packers and Cowboys over the last almost 20 years now. What’s more is that he has personally been the head coach of one of the two teams in three playoff games specifically where Green Bay beat Dallas.
It should be noted that the Packers are among the oldest teams in the NFL and have an incredibly rich history. They were in their own wilderness of sorts prior to figuring things out in the mid-90s, but as one of the oldest rivals of the Cowboys and one of the current teams who is their kryptonite, it stinks watching them pass Dallas up.
