Dallas, TX
'Floored' Cowboys GM Jerry Jones has tough decisions to make after stunning blowout loss
ARLINGTON, Texas — Jerry Jones walked to the locker room Sunday night in a state of shock. The Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager didn’t think what he just watched was possible. It’s one thing to lose a playoff game you’re supposed to win, it’s another to get embarrassed at home while riding a 16-game home winning streak.
Jones summed up Dallas’ 48-32 wild-card loss to the Green Bay Packers as one of the most surprising outcomes since he’s been involved in sports, saying multiple times that he was “floored” and adding that the result was “beyond my comprehension.”
“I don’t have any comments or questions or answers for how and why we didn’t do what we wanted tonight,” Jones said. “I say this to our fans, how much you deserve us not to have this ending.
“This seems like the most painful (loss) because we all had such great expectations and we had hope for this team.”
Jones isn’t going anywhere. He’ll remain owner and GM. But some kind of changes have to be considered after that type of season-ending defeat. Securing the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs set Dallas up for what looked like a rematch with the No. 1 seed San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, a round that hasn’t been reached by the Cowboys since the 1995 season. Losing to the seventh-seeded Packers was highly unlikely. To be completely dominated makes it one of the worst losses in franchise history.
Jones declined to get into specifics about coach Mike McCarthy’s future. McCarthy has one year remaining on his contract. Following last week’s season finale win at Washington, Jones spoke highly of what McCarthy had done in his fourth year as the team’s head coach and first year as the offensive play caller. But Jones also added, “We’ll see how each game goes,” in regard to McCarthy’s job security.
McCarthy usually meets with reporters at a podium roughly 15 minutes after each game. On Sunday, over 30 minutes passed before he walked to the podium. He then answered six questions for about 3 1/2 minutes.
“No. 1, we’re very disappointed, to a man,” he said. “I don’t think anybody saw this coming. … We didn’t get it done in any of the phases. We’re hurting, we’re disappointed, every man.”
He was then asked specifically about his job status.
“I think the biggest thing is, we’re disappointed,” he responded. “I got a whole team in the locker room that’s hurting. I haven’t thought past the outcome of this game.”
Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy: “I don’t think anyone saw this coming. We didn’t get it done in any of the phases.”
When asked about his future: “I think the biggest thing is we’re disappointed. … I haven’t thought past the outcome of this game.” pic.twitter.com/qMeRBTI8YE
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) January 15, 2024
There’s no question McCarthy has put Dallas in position the last three seasons to make deep playoff runs. It has won the NFC East twice during that time and won 12 games each season. He has delivered regular-season success that hasn’t been seen since their dynasty run in the 1990s, when the Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four seasons. But the playoff success has been missing, and that’s the biggest reason he was hired to replace Jason Garrett. Reaching the playoffs and winning a playoff game wasn’t enough. This was a group that viewed the Super Bowl as a legitimate possibility.
McCarthy believes he has been building things the right way. He can point to winning the Super Bowl in Year 5 while he was head coach of the Packers. But Jones might not be willing to give him a fifth season after sitting through the beatdown Sunday, one that included Dallas trailing 27-0 late in the second quarter and 48-16 early in the fourth quarter.
“This is a hurtful loss,” McCarthy said. “We put ourselves in position to play a home playoff game. We had a great opportunity. Felt really good about the week of preparation. We thought we matched up well. But we clearly picked the wrong day to have a bad day.”
Jones insisted several times Sunday night while standing outside of the locker room that he had not given much thought to McCarthy’s future. It was somewhat difficult to believe considering how quickly the game got out of hand. He said there was nothing set on when he will meet with McCarthy next.
“What I had planned to do was be with him tomorrow going over how we played today and getting ready for the coming week,” Jones said. “That’s what was on the agenda. Tomorrow, my agenda will be to dismiss the team.”
Jones was later asked about other teams already interviewing head-coaching candidates and the potential outcome that could have on the Cowboys, if he ultimately wanted to move in a different direction.
“That’s no issue,” Jones said. “At all. The fact that coaches have interviewed, not interviewed, there’s 30-some coaches (in the NFL) on 32 teams, so there’s a thousand coaches out there that are some way or the other, and that’s just the ones in the league. There are a lot of coaches.
“I know how to do that and handle all of those. Those aren’t high-pressure situations, coaches. … We certainly have a background in what happens after you lose a playoff game. We got too much experience with that.”
Entering Sunday, Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn was a popular name mentioned when talking about future Cowboys coaches. He’s one of the favorites to become the Seattle Seahawks’ next head coach. Dallas’ defense was as much to blame for the loss Sunday as any part of the team. Six-time Super Bowl champion coach Bill Belichick is obviously a popular name. But the former New England Patriots head coach might not be a great fit with Jones. According to online sportsbook BetOnline.ag, Belichick would be the favorite to be the Cowboys’ next head coach if Jones were to part ways with McCarthy.
Cowboys QB Dak Prescott said he is “shocked” by today’s wild card loss to the Packers.
“Obviously I didn’t play well.”
How do the Cowboys get past this and finally have playoff success?
“I wish I had that answer for you.” pic.twitter.com/G56wnC9SoG
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) January 15, 2024
Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott certainly didn’t play anything like the second-team All-Pro and MVP candidate he showed during the regular season. Much like last season’s playoff loss at San Francisco in the divisional round, Dallas’ franchise QB played one of the worst games of his career. He threw for only 87 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions in the first half. His rapport with first-team All-Pro wide receiver CeeDee Lamb might have been the worst it’s been all season through the first two quarters.
Prescott was asked after the game about the speculation of McCarthy’s coaching future in Dallas.
“He’s been amazing,” Prescott said. “I don’t know how there can be, but I understand the business. In that case, it should be about me as well, honestly. I’ve had the season that I’ve had because of him. This team has had the success that they’ve had because of him. I understand it’s about winning the Super Bowl. That’s the standard of this league and damn sure the standard of this place, so I get it, but add me to the list in that case.”
(Photo of Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott: Matthew Pearce / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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DALLAS – Thunderstorms will roll through parts of North Texas on Friday. Thankfully, none should be severe. Mother’s Day could be a different story.
Friday Forecast
According to FOX 4 Weather Meteorologist Berkeley Taylor, a cluster of thunderstorms will work their way east across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex on Friday morning.
Everything is well below severe limits, just with lots of lightning!
Scattered showers and thunderstorms will move in and out through the day on Friday. Coverage is about 20%.
An isolated strong storm or two can’t be ruled out, but the overall threat is low.
Temperatures will be in the 50s and 60s for the morning, before climbing into the 80s by the afternoon.
Weekend Forecast
Saturday will look similar, with even lower coverage expected.
Sunday presents the best chance to find rain and storms – about 50% as a cold front moves through North Texas.
North Texas is under a Level 2 out of 5 risk for severe weather. The biggest concerns will be with wind and hail.
Timing-wise, the front looks to move through in the afternoon/evening.
7-Day Forecast
Once the front is south of North Texas on Mother’s Day, the rain should come to an end, and it will stay dry into next week.
Temperatures will start to warm into the upper 80s and low 90s by midweek next week.
The Source: The information in this story is from the FOX 4 Weather team and National Weather Service.
It hasn’t even been a year since the blockbuster Micah Parsons trade, but the Dallas Cowboys have officially and completely moved on.
Although in many ways, the 2025 season feels like it was wasted with how good the Cowboys’ offense was, the decision to trade Parsons to the Green Bay Packers was pretty simple in principle: Dallas did not believe one great player was worth four or five good players. And that is a sentiment that has been repeated to an almost political degree from the Cowboys’ brain trust.
Cowboys EVP and CEO Stephen Jones recently reiterated the Dallas’ internal pleasure over how the Parsons trade has played out, and he essentially said what everyone in the NFL refuses to say: The Cowboys might have actually made the right call.
Stephen Jones likes how Dallas Cowboys have reloaded the defense after Micah Parsons trade
Here’s what Jones had to say (via NFL.com) regarding his thoughts on the trade now that the pieces are pretty much all in place:
“We feel really good about it. Obviously, much respect for Micah and what he stands for and how he plays and the caliber of player he is, but at the same time we feel good about what we’ve added via that trade.
You look at a guy like Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark, they’re alpha players who not only are great players on the field, but they’re leaders in the meeting room. How they go about their business in the offseason, [they] just bring great leadership to this team. As we mentioned, we add a guy like Caleb Downs, who is obviously the same type of character…
I just feel very optimistic that we have the right pieces in place to go out there. Ultimately, the decision we made was that one player was not worth four or five good ones.”
There is really a lot going on with what Jones says right here that will perk up a lot of ears and eyebrows.
Of course, the general sentiment seems to be that the Cowboys are pleased with the way they’ve utilized the assets they got in that trade from the Packers. The acquisition of defensive lineman Quinnen Williams gives Dallas an absolute stud in the middle, but having Kenny Clark next to him is a really underrated piece as well.
The trade back in the first round of this year’s draft with Green Bay’s selection landed the Cowboys Malachi Lawrence, Devin Moore, and LT Overton. There’s still the matter of which pick will go to the Jets next year from the Williams trade, but it will be whichever of Dallas’ and Green Bay’s pick is higher.
You can also tell that the personal makeup of the players they’ve added was important for Dallas in this process, and while Jones stops short of taking a dig at Parsons in that regard, you can hear what he’s saying pretty loud and clear when he talks about guys being “alpha” players on the field as well as leaders in the meeting room. Message sent.
The thing nobody in the NFL really wants to admit is that the Cowboys did the right thing by trading Parsons when and how they did. And while you can debate whether they truly got great value, it’s hard to argue with the idea that one player is worth four or five, especially when that one player would be taking up the same slice of the pie as most quarterbacks around the NFL.
It’s not that you can’t make it work, but in Dallas’ context, they felt like that investment in Parsons was a signal that they were “one player away”, and it’s hard to argue with their self-awareness that they simply weren’t in that position a year ago.
Although the cost was moving on from a true superstar off the edge like Micah Parsons, it’s a trade that has helped Dallas reload a huge portion of their starting defense, including adding three quality players on the defensive front, maybe more.
Most people hated the Parsons trade just on principle. How can you trade a defensive superstar still with his prime years ahead of him? Doesn’t it send a bad message to other players who earn big-money contracts? Ultimately, the Cowboys drew a proverbial line in the sand, and that’s part of the business of the NFL.
They still have to hope that all of the new additions work out, but on paper, it’s hard to argue with what the Cowboys were able to assemble rather quickly because of this trade.
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