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Here are our next-day thoughts from Monday’s Dallas Cowboys loss

Published

1 year ago

December 10, 2024

Press Room

Here are our next-day thoughts from Monday’s Dallas Cowboys loss

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.

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Dallas, TX

Dallas deck park set to reconnect Oak Cliff after decades of division

Published

2 hours ago

May 7, 2026

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Dallas deck park set to reconnect Oak Cliff after decades of division

Dallas is just days away from opening the new Harold Simmons Bridge Park, a deck park built over I‑35E near the Dallas Zoo. The project, more than 35 years in the making, is designed to reconnect the long‑divided Oak Cliff community. Instead of a traditional ribbon‑cutting, leaders held a symbolic event highlighting unity and the park’s role in bringing neighborhoods back together.

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Cowboys’ Stephen Jones says what NFL won’t admit about the Micah Parsons trade

Published

14 hours ago

May 7, 2026

Press Room

Cowboys’ Stephen Jones says what NFL won’t admit about the Micah Parsons trade

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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Battery case against Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale closed

Published

1 day ago

May 6, 2026

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Battery case against Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale closed

Arike Ogunbowale was arrested in March for allegedly punching a man outside a nightclub. Stacy Revere / Getty Images

May 6, 2026Updated 8:44 pm EDT

A misdemeanor battery case against Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale has been marked closed, according to court filings obtained by The Athletic on Wednesday.

Ogunbowale was arrested in March for allegedly punching a man outside a Miami nightclub just hours after winning an Unrivaled championship with Mist BC. According to the court documents, the case was dropped nolle pros, which means the prosecutor no longer wished to pursue criminal charges. The closing judge was Betsy Alvarez-Zane.

The incident occurred at 4:22 a.m. on March 5 outside the nightclub E11even, according to the police report. Ogunbowale, a four-time WNBA All-Star, was being escorted out of the club as a result of an unrelated altercation when she allegedly punched a man with a closed fist, causing him to fall to the ground. She was arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery.

Police said footage captured at the scene confirmed the victim’s account. Ogunbowale was taken into custody without incident.

“We are pleased that the State Attorney’s Office has exercised its discretion and elected not to move forward with this matter,” Ogunbowale’s attorney, Mitch Schuster of Meister Seelig & Schuster, said in a statement. “Ms. Ogunbowale is a person of outstanding character, and we are excited that these charges have been dismissed so she can resume her focus on her professional career.”

This was Ogunbowale’s second season with Unrivaled. She played in the 3-on-3 league’s inaugural season with Vinyl BC. She was selected with the fifth pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft by the Wings. Ogunbowale re-signed with Dallas in April on a multiyear deal.

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