It was more of the same for the Cowboys when it came to quick playoff exits.
The wait is finally over. Mike McCarthy is not the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys anymore. He lasted five eventful years with three seasons in the middle when he took the team to the playoffs. On the outside of those promising seasons, his squad finished with a losing record, largely due to being without his starting quarterback, Dak Prescott.
When McCarthy was hired to take over the team from Jason Garrett, the hope was that he would do something his predecessor couldn’t – advance past the divisional round. Sadly, the Cowboys’ playoff fate ended the same way it had before. With three shots at the playoffs, the Cowboys never made it past the divisional round. In fact, in two of those three playoff appearances, the Cowboys didn’t even make it to the divisional round. Despite more consistent regular-season success, they didn’t have it together come the postseason.
Under McCarthy, the Cowboys were the no. 2, no. 3, and no. 5 seed. Twice they opened with home playoff games after winning the NFC East. Once they opened on the road traveling to Tampa Bay to face Tom Brady’s Buccaneers. Oddly enough, it was this Wild Card road game that ended up being McCarthy’s only playoff win as the Cowboys coach.
The Cowboys were bounced from the playoffs in consecutive years against the San Francisco 49ers and then by Green Bay the following season. In all three of these postseason losses, there were moments when despair started settling in for the Cowboys. The team seemed outmatched. It wasn’t because they were up against a more talented opponent, but rather just being outplayed. The creativity wasn’t from Dallas. The blown assignments, however, were. Whether it was a slow death or a fast-and-furious beatdown, the Cowboys were sent fishing and left wondering where did things go wrong?
In 2021 against the 49ers, they fell to 13-0 in the second quarter, and again 23-7 in the third quarter. The Cowboys couldn’t ever gain any traction and when they finally made a push, they ran out of time. Literally. The clock struck zeros before Prescott could spike the ball after a designed run. In just his first trip to the playoffs as their head coach, they had found a new way to have an embarrassing end to their football season.
The following year they found themselves in a defensive battle with the 49ers. Unfortunately, the offense struggled and Prescott threw two costly interceptions. The Cowboys kept things close through three quarters, but San Fran took control in the final 15 minutes of the game. Whatever his Cowboys teams had to give, they didn’t have any fight in them down the stretch to get the win.
What happened against the Packers in 2023 is hard to explain. Green Bay scored four unanswered touchdowns to go up 27-0 in the first half. When the Cowboys finally started scoring some points, the Packers quickly answered and always stayed too far out of reach. In his first-ever playoff game, Jordan Love almost had a perfect passer rating. Running back Aaron Jones scored three touchdowns. It was terrible.
The game had an eerie similarity to their 2016 playoff matchup when the Cowboys hosted a Packers team who had also started the season 4-6, but then got hot and earned one of the final playoff spots. And like then, the Packers went ahead big early. Green Bay scored touchdowns on their first three possessions and took a 21-3 lead. However, in 2016 the Cowboys kept fighting and tied the game at 31-31 with just 35 seconds left. Sadly, this game had a bad ending as well, but at least the Cowboys fought their way back into the game.
Not only did McCarthy’s team fail to get over the divisional round hump, in each instance, they just seemed to get worse as the game progressed. They weren’t figuring anything out. They weren’t making the necessary adjustments. They were just there. There to fall short again.
The Cowboys will reset their head coach and another fella will get a chance to crack the code. Will things ever change? We don’t know, but maybe with another guy in charge, the Cowboys will be better prepared when the postseason rolls around.
