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September 8, 2024

4:25 PM ET

Cleveland, OH

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Sunday

September 15, 2024

1:00 PM ET

Dallas, TX

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Sunday

September 22, 2024

4:25 PM ET

Dallas, TX

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Thursday

September 26, 2024

8:15 PM ET

New York, NY

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Sunday

October 6, 2024

8:20 PM ET

Pittsburgh, PA

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October 13, 2024

4:25 PM ET

Dallas, TX

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Sunday

October 27, 2024

8:20 PM ET

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Sunday

November 3, 2024

1:00 PM ET

Atlanta, GA

Dallas Cowboys
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Sunday

November 10, 2024

4:25 PM ET

Dallas, TX

Dallas Cowboys
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Houston Texans

Monday

November 18, 2024

8:15 PM ET

Dallas, TX

Washington Commanders
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Dallas Cowboys

Sunday

November 24, 2024

1:00 PM ET

Washington, D.C.

Dallas Cowboys
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Thursday

November 28, 2024

4:30 PM ET

Dallas, TX

Dallas Cowboys
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Cincinnati Bengals

Monday

December 9, 2024

8:15 PM ET

Dallas, TX

Carolina Panthers
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Dallas Cowboys

Sunday

December 15, 2024

1:00 PM ET

Carolina, NC

Dallas Cowboys
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Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Sunday

December 22, 2024

8:20 PM ET

Dallas, TX

Philadelphia Eagles
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Dallas Cowboys

Sunday

December 29, 2024

4:25 PM ET

Philadelphia, PA

Dallas Cowboys
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Washington Commanders

Sunday

January 5, 2025

TBD

Dallas, TX

A closer look at why an all-NFC East championship game is the peak of Cowboys embarrassing fallout

A closer look at why an all-NFC East championship game is the peak of Cowboys embarrassing fallout

Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images

It may be hard to believe, but there are still NFL teams playing football this weekend. Four of them to be exact, meaning, of course, that Sunday’s games will determine who plays in Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. A division rival of the Dallas Cowboys is guaranteed to be there as the Philadelphia Eagles host the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship Game. For the Eagles, it will be their third appearance in this game over the last eight seasons. Representing a division well-known for not having any repeat winners for more than the last two decades, the Eagles have found some consistency in a place it matters much more – the postseason. The Commanders appearance in Sunday’s early game is their first since 1991, which officially made the Cowboys drought of not appearing a win away from the Super Bowl since 1996 the longest in the conference.

When the Eagles and Commanders square off for the third time this season, looking to determine a series winner after both teams defended home field in the regular season, it will be a matchup of former Cowboys coaches in Eagles OC Kellen Moore and Commanders HC Dan Quinn as well. While Dallas’ circus of a coaching search ended with internal candidate Brian Schottenheimer being hired, two of their former assistants have found the grass much greener on the other side.

As if the Cowboys going 7-10 and missing the playoffs entirely after winning the division a year ago didn’t offer enough potential for their front office to finally learn some hard lessons, the cherry on top has to be the two teams finishing ahead of them still vying for the Lombardi trophy.

Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

The Cowboys are well aware that a rapidly growing number of younger fans are coming to know them more for their playoff failures since 1996 and not anything close to their own history of hoisting the game’s ultimate prize. The actual nuts and bolts, football-related reasons why the Cowboys have fallen off so much feel as far away as their Super Bowl XXX win, and unfortunately adding the Commanders and Eagles reaching this point with their former coaches hasn’t seemed to help much.

The Cowboys went a combined 1-3 against these teams this season, with a wacky, impossible to replicate fourth quarter win at the Commanders in Week 12. Aside from that the reasons these teams are better than the Cowboys on the field are obvious, and have been on display for the Eagles in playoff wins against the Packers and Rams so far, and likewise for the Commanders against the Buccaneers and top-seeded Lions on the road.

One of the results of being faced with an early start to the offseason in Dallas was supposed to be the jolt needed to actually address the future of the team. Instead the Cowboys appear just as rudderless as they were throughout a meaningless regular season they brought upon themselves. So, with less than 48 hours until either Kellen Moore or Dan Quinn is actually handed a trophy, let’s take a closer look at the reality the Cowboys currently find themselves in.

The Coaching Factor

Robert Saleh. Leslie Frazier. Kellen Moore. Brian Schottenheimer. Those are the four names of the only coaches to officially interview for the Cowboys head coaching vacancy. This is the list produced by Jerry Jones’ reported “solo mission” to find his franchise’s next coach after five seasons of Mike McCarthy.

No Ben Johnson, who went to the Chicago Bears. No Aaron Glenn, who is now the head coach of the New York Jets. No Mike Vrabel, who predictably returned to the New England Patriots.

Even the slight intrigue of the Cowboys starting the interview process with Saleh and then adding Frazier, signaling a potential shift to a defensive mind after a decade and a half of Garrett and McCarthy specializing in offense, was quickly swept up in the momentum of another offensive hire feeling inevitable once Schottenheimer became the first candidate to reach a second interview.

The very fact the Cowboys needed a new head coach after rumors and speculation they wanted McCarthy back, and it was more of the former coach’s decision to part ways than it was the front office was surprising. McCarthy has since interviewed for the now-taken Bears job as well as the still-open Saints job.

If this is true, hiring Schottenheimer is the closest thing to McCarthy, his offensive coordinator for the last two seasons, and is probably also the closest thing the Cowboys can do to tell the fans they don’t see a need for real change. Schottenheimer has never had an opportunity to call plays for the Cowboys, but the bad taste left in the mouth of how the offense looked so inept and fundamentally broken under both McCarthy and Schottenheimer’s guidance in 2024 is enough to feel like retaining any significant part of the previous staff on this side of the ball is a bad idea.

There is another layer to this that perhaps gets even darker. Again, if it remains true that the Cowboys were sent into scramble mode even just a little bit by McCarthy’s exit, their final interview list paints a picture of not having the easiest time in the world convincing coaches to consider the job. When the quarterback responsible for three of the five Super Bowls in the team’s history calls the job “not exactly coveted”, there is fire where this smoke blows.

The Cowboys clearly had their opportunity to choose Quinn as their head coach if they wanted to over the three seasons he was McCarthy’s defensive coordinator, sticking with McCarthy and watching Quinn remain loyal. This loyalty ran out at the exact same time the magic of Quinn’s defense did as well, as a 48-32 beatdown at the hands of the Packers in the Wild Card round last year hurt Quinn’s prospects as a head coach candidate elsewhere. It took a while, but Quinn ultimately settled in Washington, and now the year one results have been some of the best in franchise history, with a defense featuring plenty of former Cowboys as well.

No, the Cowboys couldn’t have exactly had a crystal ball alerting them that Quinn would reach the NFC Championship Game with a rival team in his first season as head coach, but they lived in the dynamic of having both McCarthy and an already former HC in Quinn working together for three seasons and never captured anything close to the same success. McCarthy went from talking about wanting to run the ball and rest his defense to lighting up scoreboards in the passing game last season, and still being one and done in the playoffs after one of the worst defensive performances in franchise history, only to come back this year still emphasizing the importance of the run game but dabbling with Ezekiel Elliott and Rico Dowdle as a failed tandem in the early and mid parts of the season.

Cohesiveness and being on the same page from top to bottom as a franchise, coaching staff, or locker room, are not strong suits of the Cowboys when compared to the teams they know intimately well that have surpassed them in the worst possible way. When they had the combination of McCarthy as head coach, Moore as a strong offensive coordinator, and Quinn as a strong defensive coordinator, it yielded one playoff win in two years in the Wild Card round. When the Eagles had now head coaches Jonathan Gannon and Shane Steichen as coordinators for Nick Sirianni, they went to the Super Bowl. Now, they are trying to replicate this with Moore and Vic Fangio as DC – an experienced coach that’s done things his way in Philadelphia and particularly had the Cowboys number wherever he goes.

Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

While we say all the time that there is no magic bullet when it comes to winning games in the NFL, tirelessly eliminating things that must be overcome both on the field, and off to do so on a weekly basis, is simply one of them the Cowboys cannot figure out for the life of them. They seemingly exist to get in their own way, frustration level of the fans be damned.

The team equally had the opportunity, for a slightly longer period of time of four seasons, to hire Kellen Moore as their next head coach. It’s been the worst kept secret of all time the Cowboys have always viewed Moore, their former left-handed backup QB, as future head coaching material. Perhaps waiting for the league to validate this, Moore has interviewed for other head coaching jobs since leaving Dallas, including in this cycle for the Jaguars and Saints, but has remained an offensive coordinator for the Chargers and now the Eagles.

In yet another way that only the Cowboys can find though, the team made Moore something of the fanbases preferred choice by the end of the coaching search, thanks to the lackluster list of alternatives. This artificial way of propping up their homegrown talent of sorts would almost certainly not be met with the same opportunities for Moore to coach an offense built like the one he currently has in Philadelphia, which brings us to our next comparison point on both the Eagles and Commanders….

Buying The Groceries

The “secret sauce” of how most games are won and lost in this league doesn’t have to be all that secret. In fact, the recipe will be right in front of the Cowboys in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday. Having a deep enough roster to both deal with injury attrition and develop as a team throughout the season to be different enough in January than you were in September are necessities the Cowboys don’t have.

The biggest key to the Eagles return to being a well-rounded team is of course Saquon Barkley out of the backfield. His big play ability paired with the Eagles’ ability to control games on the ground and play their Fangio “umbrella” defense from ahead has made them so hard to beat. The Eagles sorely lacked an identity down the stretch of last season when they lost five of their last six games and were blown out in the Wild Card round, wasting a previous 10-1 start to the year. Barkley has been a one-man answer to this problem in his first year with the team and first alongside Moore as offensive coordinator.

The Eagles having a dominant offensive line and running back primed to take full advantage of it on every single carry should be a reminder of what the Cowboys once were. Equally trying to build their team in this image with the likes of Ezekiel Elliott, Zack Martin in his prime, Tyron Smith, and Travis Frederick at different times, the Cowboys have been stuck on trying to still have this identity despite no longer having the personnel for it. One of the perceived reasons Schottenheimer is their next head coach is his tendencies to favor the run game in previous stops as an OC.

Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images

The Cowboys have more work to do than just on their coaching staff to be a great run team again though. Tony Pollard was quite literally the first free agent to depart last offseason, meaning the Cowboys had the most possible time to come up with a replacement plan, and still chose to only add Elliott and not draft a running back. The result was a run game that was an utter waste of time through the early part of the season when the team still had any chance of maintaining a winning record, only finding some hope here once Dowdle became the featured guy.

Other teams with head coaching openings may be seeing through the idea that Moore is suddenly a fit candidate and accurately attributing the success to Barkley, but the real truth here is more nuanced. There is nothing wrong with elite players making good coaches look even better, and the Cowboys are once again – stop me if you’ve heard this already – missing all of these ingredients.

On the Commanders side of things, they have jumped out as an extreme example of maximizing a quarterback’s rookie contract in Jayden Daniels’ first season. Daniels not playing at all like a rookie, staying poised and making plays with both his arm and his legs, is a huge reason for the team’s instant turnaround. They also have former Cowboys Noah Igbinoghene, Dorance Armstrong, and Dante Fowler playing key roles in Quinn’s defense. Former Quinn assistant Joe Whitt is the Commanders defensive coordinator, also helping this unit get up to speed on the new scheme quickly. The result was evident in the Commanders shocking Divisional Round win at the heavily-favorited Lions. Washington conceded 521 yards of offense, allowed 30 first downs, and 31 points, but scored 14 points off four takeaways to win by two touchdowns.

Yet again, the Cowboys flirted with this play style under Quinn and were actually the best team in the league at taking the ball away multiple times, but failed to take it to the prom of the conference championship game – a feat the Commanders have made look easy as if they expect to do it every year now.

The football aspects of all the Cowboys do will not stop being buried under everything else they strive to be as a franchise, but football persists nonetheless. The playoffs have been one reminder after another at how far Dallas has fallen from grace, and that’s without knowing it was building towards the team that took the division from them hosting the conference championship against another division rival. With one guaranteed to go to a Super Bowl against either a Chiefs team looking for a historic three-peat, or a Bills team that’s been consistently knocking at the door for years in ways the Cowboys can only dream of, the servings of humble pie are plentiful even when the amount of football games left to enjoy this year is not.

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