Seasons like this often yield the same sort of responses from people.
“The Dallas Cowboys are Murphy’s Law embodied.”
“Don’t worry, the Cowboys will find a way to make it worse.”
“If there is anything I trust the Cowboys to do it is to let me down.”
You know the type of responses I am talking about. Odds are someone you know or interact with, maybe even you yourself, has offered these to someone at some point this calendar year. It has been a very long time since we felt truly good about this team, although the last two weeks did offer a bit of a reprieve from the doom and gloom with them winning back-to-back games against division rivals and even taking home one on Thanksgiving.
Monday night was like the 6 A.M. alarm for the first day following a long and amazing weekend. It snapped us back to reality akin to Cinderella when the clock struck midnight. All we have now is a pumpkin and our collective thoughts.
This weekly discussion is a space for those thoughts, 3 of them to be precise.
Welcome to our Day After Thoughts following Monday night’s loss to Cincinnati.
It really is difficult to contextualize just how bad this season is
I’ve asked this before but will do again: What is the best moment you have felt as a Dallas Cowboys fan since the team’s playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers in January?
It is a really difficult question to answer. Options include the KaVontae Turpin punt return against Cleveland or his kick return against Washington, or perhaps the Jalen Tolbert game-winner in Pittsburgh. That’s it.
The turn of each significant moment in the NFL calendar has been met with overwhelming frustration by this team, something that their two-game winning streak helped mask, which the loss uncovered and revealed to the light once more. Given that the loss also effectively ended their playoff hopes (however faint they were), it has now cast them into the worst place you can be for an entire month of action… meaningless football.
The Murphy’s Law proposition certainly feels like it has held true with this team with how they lost on Amani Oruwariye’s blunder. This team has found new and innovative ways to twist the knife of pain that they made sure to bury over the slow course of an entire offseason.
What else can go wrong?!
Rico Dowdle should have been used this way starting Week 1
Rico Dowdle has 329 rushing yards in his last three games played for the Dallas Cowboys. Given that he has had 18 carries at minimum in each of the last three games (no player since Ezekiel Elliott in 2020 has had such a streak for the Cowboys) it makes a lot of sense.
Why is that, you ask? The point here is not that Dowdle is some game-changing running back who the Cowboys have been suppressing for over half of a season, but it is certainly obvious, and was way back when, that he is the best option on the team. Any carries in any other direction were inefficient by definition.
Whether you do or don’t buy that the Cowboys wanted to make Zeke a thing again out of some level of loyalty to a favorite player of theirs (this would never happen, no way they would let a player un-retire from a totally different profession like, I don’t know, broadcasting, only to return and command a lion’s share of snaps at their position) they at best completely misevaluated the talent on their own roster by not committing to this path many, many months ago.
A huge part of the operation has to be questioned and fixed.
The Micah Parsons extension talk is just around the corner from all of this
As things stand we have maybe a month separating us from the Dallas Cowboys having a new coach. Things can work fast once the regular season is over.
Of course, that proposition still carries an “if” given that we do not know if the team will decide to retain Mike McCarthy after all. They are speaking positively of him in this current moment, but what else can they really say with a month to go as noted?
One thing that is for certain is that the moment the dust settles on this disaster of a season the hourglass flips upside down for Micah Parsons and talks surrounding a contract extension for him. The Cowboys already burnt up some time in that hourglass by not getting it done last offseason and in not taking care of CeeDee Lamb or Dak Prescott until the eleventh hour they drew a ton of national attention to themselves (that maybe did not quite exist at the level it does now) for how they go about stalling on these massive deals.
If the Cowboys are quick to get an extension done with Parsons, something that seems inevitable and an objective they would want to take care of, then they will prove that on some level they learned from the chaos of last offseason; however, if they delay and stall yet again then we can lower expectations around the head coaching search (assuming there is one) because no one will be able to save the franchise from themselves.
