What needs to happen for the Cowboys to get back on track in your opinion?
The Dallas Cowboys seem to be in free-fall, with rock bottom coming at them fast. They have had three lopsided losses so far, and looking ahead, it is not out of the realm of possibility that they will not win another game this year. There are some weak teams like the New York Giants and Carolina Panthers ahead, but unless they find a way to get something out of Cooper Rush or Trey Lance, even those are possible losses. Maybe the defense will find a way to win a game or two, but with the way they folded against the Philadelphia Eagles, that is questionable.
We are already wondering what the team will try to do in the offseason to fix things. But that is going to require the ownership to accept the real problems. Is that even possible? Our David Howman and Tom Ryle discuss.
Tom: It may be a bridge too far for Jerry Jones. His biggest problem stares back at him in the mirror. This week, we saw just how impossible it seems for him to admit a mistake and take steps to correct them, even when it is a simple fix. The sun issue has been around forever and this is not the first time it has cost them points. As they were saying on 105.3 The Fan on Monday morning, not putting the curtains up for games is strictly a decision he makes. He seems to think that it affects both teams equally and balances out. Given how much each game matters in the 17 game season, that just makes no sense.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. Jones is going to be looking for a new head coach. He may well reach the point he makes another midseason firing. But he very much prefers to hire experienced head coaches, which means his pool of candidates are pretty much all ones who were fired from their last jobs. Chalk it up as one more way he refuses to accept the failures of the past. We now have months of hearing Bill Belichick linked to the team. That has all the hallmarks of an unworkable idea given how Belichick wants so much control over everything, especially the roster.
As Han Solo and others in the Star Wars universe have said, I have a bad feeling about this.
David: It really doesn’t matter who the next head coach is. The problems with this organization go way deeper, and this sun issue is ultimately small beans in the grand scheme of things but also perfectly illustrates the problem. How many times have we heard Jerry say that he’ll do anything to win another Super Bowl? But yet putting up curtains is not something he’s willing to do.
Simply put, this man does not care about winning football. The fact that Mike McCarthy posted three straight 12-win seasons in this environment is a miracle. Consider that he’s also the only coach to ever do that under Jerry. He’s also the first coach since Barry Switzer to make the playoffs three straight years. The lack of consistency isn’t a function of the coach as much as it is a function of the dysfunction that Jerry tolerates and oftentimes invites into the building.
Bill Belichick isn’t going to change that, even if he was still the coach people think of when they hear his name and not someone whose last playoff win predates the Jason Witten Comeback Experience (patent pending) of 2019. Any coach that’s good enough to win in these circumstances is likely going to pass on the circus anyway, in much the same way that several candidates rebuffed the Panthers just a year ago in their coaching search.
Tom: The head coaching search is going to be, um, interesting. But there is also a lot of reconstruction to do on the roster, and they already are dealing with some real limitations there. They have committed a ton of cap space to Dak Prescott, who seems to be dealing with injuries every season now, and CeeDee Lamb. Now Micah Parsons is up. I hate to say it, but they would probably be best served looking to trade him. He is good enough to be attractive to a team with cap space and some creativity in a contract extension.
What to do with that cap space is another issue that goes right back to the Jones family and their unwillingness to spend it on free agents. There is no reason to expect them to change from their draft-centered approach to roster building. They are looking at a good position in the draft. Currently they are sitting at 11th overall, according to Tankathon, and can be expected to move up. It doesn’t exactly help to have traded away their fourth-rounder, but they will likely also pick up some comp picks, at least in the sixth and/or seventh round.
The question is how they use them. This looks like a good year for defensive linemen, which would help if they should move on from Parsons. That is always an open question since Jerry likes to keep his own top picks. And this team has a ton of needs, like running back and coming up with a future plan at quarterback, at least for depth. And there should be some consideration for life after Dak. It is still far too early to be trying to figure out how they will use the draft since a new head coach will have to be added to the equation.
It is not too early to have some pessimism, because Jerry Jones still has final say, and he just loves him some shiny toys.
That’s what we always come back to. The owner/general manager/media hog remains the biggest limiting factor for this team. He’s already obviously ticked off, a lot, and that will likely get worse as losses pile up. The Cowboys are already organically tanking, and as much as that might benefit them in the long run, it doesn’t sit well with Jones.
Sadly, we still have eight more games, and they are probably going to be agonizing.
David: I’m not overly opposed to dealing Parsons if the return is worth it, especially considering how much the pass rusher loves to make incendiary comments to the media, whether he means to or not. The Cowboys have a leadership issue right now, and whoever coaches this team next is going to need some more players with that dawg in them. Dak Prescott has it, but he’s not taking the field again this year. Parsons, thus far, has shown to lack that added element and he certainly lacks the leadership aspect that guys like DeMarcus Lawrence and Jourdan Lewis have. If Parsons is going to be part of the solution in Dallas, he needs to up his off-field game. But I doubt that Jerry will even entertain the idea of a trade.
That’s probably for the best in the long run anyway, because Parsons is a talent unlike any other and it’s often unwise to part with great players. It’s especially unwise to do so when you’ve already tied up so much cap space in your quarterback and receiver, which would prevent any real rebuild for the next four years.
In 2025, when a new coach is roaming the Cowboys sidelines, he’ll be tasked with winning now. He’ll have some pieces to work with too, and I’m confident in Will McClay landing a really good player with that first-round pick. But, as you say, it’ll all come back to the man who actually runs the show.
Talent has not been an issue for the Cowboys in the last decade or so. Even before then, they had really talented players. What really kills this team is that they aren’t focused enough on the most important details, and nobody seems to be able to get that part down. Bill Parcells couldn’t do it, Wade Phillips couldn’t do it, Jason Garrett – who had a frontrow seat to how to win in the Jerry Jones era – couldn’t do it, and now Mike McCarthy couldn’t do it.
I know fans are largely ready to be done with McCarthy, and have been for a while, but if you’re holding your breath and waiting on that silver bullet of a coach that can pierce through all the ridiculousness of this organization… prepare to suffocate, because Jerry keeps choking the life out of this franchise in increasingly more frustrating ways.
Tom: It’s depressing, really. Jerry is the true anchor that is weighing this team down, and he is constitutionally unable to change his ways.
If he would just hire a true GM, it could be different. It would still take some time, but the team needs someone else running personnel decisions, including having a big say on the coaching hires. Jerry is too emotionally invested in many of his players. They need a clear, impassionate decision maker, and I would further stipulate that the best arrangement would be to keep Will McClay right where he is to feed scouting data to the GM.
That is sadly just a pipe dream. I don’t wish ill for Jerry, but I wish he would consider a form of semi-retirement, where he still sits in the owner’s box but lets Stephen take over. Hopefully Stephen would see the wisdom in a true GM that is not a blood relative. Whether that would be the path he chose remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, we have more of the same as the most likely future. This is starting to look disturbingly like the years between the Super Bowl runs and the emergence of Tony Romo, when the team just could not find success.
David: Asking Jerry to not be involved in every minute detail is like asking a zebra to change its stripes, unfortunately. And I have little hope that Stephen would change course in any drastic way, considering he has literally never worked anywhere other than under his father in Dallas. He quite literally doesn’t know any other way to run a football team, as is evident from the decisions he’s made regarding the salary cap.
For what it’s worth, Will McClay’s only NFL experience outside of this organization was one season with the Jaguars all the way back in 2001. For as good as McClay has done in building this team through the draft, it’s not exactly like he represents any sort of fresh thinking either. After all, this is his 23rd year with the Cowboys, and he hasn’t stuck around this long because he constantly challenges Jerry and Stephen’s way of thinking.
When the Cowboys first hired McCarthy, I wrote a piece that essentially amounted to “If Mike McCarthy can’t put this team over the hump, nobody can.” At the time, I hoped to be wrong, but as we enter the twilight days of the McCarthy era I can’t help but feel as if this is as good as it gets. To paraphrase a line from Lions head coach Dan Campbell, who I advocated for before Dallas chose McCarthy, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel but it’s a freight train coming your way.