The Ice Bowl was a long time ago. Not to diminish its significance to the Dallas Cowboys at large, or their relationship with the Green Bay Packers in particular, but when it comes to the former we are reaching a point where we have to look at their history in two halves: B.D. and A.D.
The Drought™ is on the verge of officially reaching the age of 30 this year for the Cowboys. It is for this reason that we must consider life Before Drought and After Drought.
You are painfully familiar with how the Cowboys have not reached even an NFC Championship Game since the 1995 stadium, a contest they won right before they last lifted the Lombardi Trophy at Sun Devil Stadium. From a Cowboys standpoint, it is hard not to look at how the Packers were involved in the title game, a particular point that has evaded Dallas, and feel like the franchises have been cosmically intertwined ever since.
This Sunday night will see the Packers visit AT&T Stadium to play the Cowboys. They will be bringing one of the greatest Cowboys in recent memory, arguably the greatest in Micah Parsons, as he was just traded there a month ago. If you had told us this would happen the last time that Green Bay was in the building, it would have been impossible to fathom. Oh, and the last time they were in the building they delivered the Cowboys one of the more demoralizing losses the franchise has ever seen. In many ways, the Cowboys are still trying to recover from that 2023 Wild Card Round defeat. You can make an argument that it was the most embarrassing Cowboys playoff loss in the Jerry Jones era.
It is difficult to encapsulate the cosmic nature of all things Cowboys and Packers in that particular moment, but it is equally difficult for all points in time that are A.D. That playoff win was Green Bay’s third in Dallas’ home building of AT&T Stadium. That is, of course, how many the Cowboys have themselves since the venue opened in 2009. What’s absurd is that the Packers only have two from beating the Cowboys specifically there, as their other one was the one when they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV (it was Cowboys Stadium at the time for technical purposes).
That Super Bowl win put Mike McCarthy in a type of NFL lore that led to him getting the Cowboys job in the early days of 2020 when the team moved on from Jason Garrett. Consider that Garrett’s greatest moment as a player came against the Packers, by the way, during the 1994 Thanksgiving Day Game.
This is the same McCarthy who correctly challenged Dez Bryant’s catch for the Cowboys in a playoff game between the clubs, when Dallas was led by Garrett, at Lambeau Field, and who won the Divisional Round matchup between the two in Arlington in January of 2017 (also Garrett’s Cowboys).
Dez’s catch. McCarthy’s Packers with Aaron Rodgers on 3rd and 20 at the end of the 2016 season. Dallas hiring McCarthy in 2020 to succeed the Garrett who shined against Green Bay and lost twice to McCarthy as the Cowboys head coach. Never mind the fact that Garrett got the Cowboys job after Wade Phillips was fired immediately following a loss to Mike McCarthy’s Packers at Lambeau Field the season they won the Super Bowl. The Cowboys losing with McCarthy to the Packers at the end of 2023. Dallas trading Parsons to the Packers right before beginning their first season of play post-McCarthy.
Cosmically-aligned isn’t strong enough to describe this weird connection.
Think back to the 2016 season that we have referenced several times already. Early in that campaign the Cowboys traveled to Lambeau Field to face McCarthy, Rodgers, and all of the rest. At that point in time the Cowboys had only ever won once at the storied Lambeau Field (2008).
Rookie Dak Prescott was in the process of proving himself to the world and at the moment had helped lead the team to a 4-1 record. Remarkably, he had yet to throw an interception at that point in his young career.
Prescott left the field at halftime and shook hands with former Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who famously never won at Texas Stadium, as he was about to be celebrated for having entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame a few months prior. Almost immediately after shaking hands with Favre, Prescott threw his first interception when play resumed. It was almost as if one number four had transferred the curse (Favre is the NFL’s all-time leader in interceptions) to another.
The Cowboys would go on to win that day and therefore earned their second victory ever at Lambeau. That win was part of what served as the momentum for Dallas to fully turn things over to Prescott from his predecessor in Tony Romo. This is, of course, the same Romo who is a Wisconsin native and grew up emulating the aforementioned Favre.
Dallas has played the Packers five time since then. Two of those games were the playoff losses for Dallas and only a single one of them was held in Green Bay, Mike McCarthy’s return which carried part of the cosmic energy we have been discussing here.
Dallas has lost all five games to the Packers overall since that day in 2016, though.
Watching Micah Parsons take the field with the Packers against the Cowboys is certainly going to be weird. No one is denying this. But we are at a point with the Cowboys and Packers, particularly from the Cowboys side of things, where weird is par for the course. Weird is to be expected. Nothing about how these two teams are connected to one another has been normal in the A.D. sense.
Brace yourself for weirdness. If this duo has taught us anything it is that it is going to happen in a way that will continually outdo itself.
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