It’s time to close the curtains. If there remained a faint glimmer of hope to see competitive football out of the 2024 Dallas Cowboys, that flicker has died. The show is over.
The 34-6 extermination at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, at home, had everything. Down 7-3 with a first-and-goal at the Philadelphia six, the Cowboys came away with a field goal. Along the way, CeeDee Lamb lost a potential touchdown in the glory that is the notorious AT&T Stadium rays of sun. Jerry Jones addressed this issue after the game, apparently unprompted, because the media has given up expecting a thoughtful answer from Jones on the matter.
The Story Of the Sun is a great parable for all things Cowboys right now. We have a little equivocation, by mentioning that every opponent has to deal with the sun. (Think of how often the Joneses mention how they’re no different from any other team that has to deal with the salary cap, despite wildly varying approaches.) We shift a little bit of the blame to the coaching staff by referencing the coin toss. We even get a little defensive over a small issue that the offended party extrapolates out to a wider “I guess we just can’t do anything right” bit of sarcasm with, “Well, let’s tear the damn stadium down and build another one.” This is as down bad as it gets for a man like Jones.
We got confirmation that the front office vastly overrated backup quarterback Cooper Rush based on his storybook 4-1 record while filling in for Dak Prescott in 2022, when Rush had the support of a good run game and an elite defense. We were reassured that sending away a fourth-round pick for Trey Lance in 2023 was as foolish as suspected. More on that later.
We got a carry from Ezekiel Elliott from the Philadelphia six-yard line that resulted in a fumble. Fumbles happen, and a fairly random result such as that one are far from the most compelling reasons why Elliott should not be touching an NFL football ever again. But perhaps at least it will quiet the fans and media (and general manager!), who have been crowing about Elliott’s lack of situational opportunities.
We have a player airing his frustrations with his boss through the media, as CeeDee Lamb was not shy about advocating for curtains at the west end of the stadium. During the week, we witnessed the head coach coming about as close to being critical of the way the front office has operated for the last year or so. After the game, Micah Parsons struck a morose, existential disposition when asked about the future of McCarthy: “All coaching aside, Mike can leave and go wherever he wants, but guys I kind of feel bad for are guys like Zack Martin and guys who might be on their last year or on their way out. Because that’s who I wanted to hold the trophy for. You want to win games and do great things with those types of legends who put in more time and work than Mike McCarthy ever did. Those are the kind of guys that I have so much sympathy and hurt for.” Probably not the endorsement McCarthy was looking for as a gift on his 61st birthday.
This team has been playing with a sub-zero confidence level and swagger since the Week 2 beatdown against the now 3-7 Saints. For two months, they’ve looked like a team that knows it has no answers; now, they’re basically saying as much. We throw around the term “tanking” in sports in a way that makes it a binary, black-and-white choice with no nuance. The NFL is a dangerous place where, unlike in the NBA and MLB, not giving full effort can result in a serious injury. The league’s trade deadline has come and gone, and of course the Cowboys confidently considered themselves too close to being in playoff contention to be sellers. There will be no restocking of the cupboard, but hey, Jonathan Mingo is under contract for the next two years! Of course, much like in free agency and contract negotiations with franchise cornerstones, the front office misread the room.
So what can the Cowboys do? Scary to think this season is barely half over. Jones again reiterated he will not be firing McCarthy midseason. He again expressed regret over the one occasion where he did such a thing, firing Wade Phillips in 2010, and this time, he tacked on second thoughts about firing Chan Gailey after two seasons. I find this flat-out hilarious. First, the only two coaching decisions he is saying he would’ve handled differently are the only two that just about everyone who has followed this team agreed with? That is a level of narcissism and contrarianism few people possess. Second, isn’t this the same person who blew up in an interview last month when asked about decisions he made this offseason because the past is the past?
The biggest personnel question is who is under center for the rest of the season. I have zero feel for this, because I can’t predict what the rational motives would be for any of the actors involved. McCarthy knows he’s not coming back, and he also knows that as he pursues other opportunities, it is unlikely he will be judged around the league based on anything that happens the rest of the way. One way or the other, opinions on McCarthy are solidified. Perhaps (and that is a big “perhaps”) Rush gives Dallas the best chance to win games, and prove he is worthy of being back in the backup role next season. Being the competitor he is, McCarthy is always going to care about winning. But when you know you aren’t coming back, what does that matter? To this point, Lance has never shown the ability to be an NFL player, let alone an NFL starter. He probably reduces the team’s chance of winning. But maybe the competitor in McCarthy wants to see if he can get something out of Lance, just to keep himself entertained. Maybe out of an affinity for Lance he would like to see him rehabilitate his career, independent of what that means for the Cowboys.
Jones’ motivations and incentives are equally murky. If he believes Rush optimizes the chance for wins, does he hold that line until the team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs? And even at that point, does he die on the all-in hill and sell it as a perverted obligation to the fans to put “the best team” on the field? On the other hand, Jones bet big on Lance, despite all evidence to the contrary. Does his desire to get a personal “win” this season move him to advocate for Lance? This season may have been reduced to a battle for next season’s QB2 spot, but with both players headed to free agency and a new coaching staff on the way, how much will the production the rest of the way even matter? Maybe it just comes down to entertainment, because whatever this is, it certainly isn’t any fun to watch.
There will be plenty of time to talk about this, but the question bears repeating: what exactly was the desired outcome for Lance? He wins the backup spot in camp, gets a little fill-in time due to a minor Prescott injury, plays well, and then is re-signed at the going rate for a capable backup in the offseason? The club was always going to extend Prescott, so for that and, well, Lance’s entire body of work, any idea that Lance was viewed as a project-potential-starter was foolish. Did the Cowboys really trade away a fourth-round pick for the sole purpose of finding out if Lance is capable of being a backup quarterback paid at market value? It sure seems so.
Prescott is most likely headed for season-ending surgery, and I don’t care what news he gets on his fifth medical opinion, he clearly should not play again this year. Whatever is happening with DaRon Bland’s lingering foot injury seems ominous, so I would shut him down for the season. Eric Kendricks has had a nice career, but there is no reason he should be playing the third-most defensive snaps in a game as he did on Sunday. Brandin Cooks should not play for this team again. Mingo, on the other hand, should play as often as possible so the front office can gauge how much he lessens the need for additional reinforcements at receiver. It is far too early to tell if this year’s first-round pick, Tyler Guyton, is headed for bust status. But Asim Richards, who filled in for him capably against the Eagles, should get as many snaps as possible the rest of the way. Perhaps some of those snaps should come on the right side, where Terrance Steele has been a massive disappointment since his knee injury in late 2022. It would be painful to move on from Steele as his extension is only a year old, but it’s time to find out if that is an option. Rookie second-round pick Luke Schoonmaker played just 11 snaps at tight end on Sunday. This is a perfect opportunity to see if his growth can be expedited and get a feel for what his ceiling is.
Jones, McCarthy, and Prescott absolutely deserve praise and plaudits for posting three consecutive 12-win seasons. But this is what it looks like when empires fall. The cracks that were always there are readily more glaring; the operation becomes bloated and loses all agility. At least the Romans won a few world championships. This era of the Dallas Cowboys will conclude with one playoff win in the wild-card round. Unfortunately for fans, the next era will have many of the same features.
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