The Dallas Cowboys, that team that captured the attention and fell in love with those fans belonging to the so-called ‘Generation X’, that is, those who are between 56 and 40 years old, by winning three Super Bowls (1992, 1993 and 1995) in a span of four years, from the hand of coaches like Jim Johnson y Barry Switzer and with glories in the field like Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman o Michael Irvin, now sail in limbo.
After Sunday’s 23-17 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, andIt’s been 27 years since the last time Dallas was crowned NFL champion in a Super Bowl. and with it the dismay, anger and frustration of loyal but demanding Cowboys fans has reached a new level.
At the end of Sunday’s wild card game in AT&T Stadium, it seems that the owner of the team, Mr. Jerry Jones, spoke for all Cowboys fans after the new chapter of disappointment for the franchise was enshrined.
“I am extremely upset and shocked,” Jones said. “I never imagined that we could end this way. After seeing the performance on the field, the scoreboard doesn’t even reflect what happened. In the end I have to give credit that the guys didn’t give up and put on the most competitive game. But I was already lost.”
As the team was leaving the field through the tunnels towards the locker rooms at the end of the game, some fans did not control their momentum and threw objects at the players. In the last 12 years, Dallas has only won a couple of postseason games., to put the fan outburst in context.
During the 2021 season break, Jerry Jones decided to give his quarterback Dak Prescott the biggest contract in franchise history., a pact for four years and 126 million dollars in insured money, reaching $160 million with bonuses. This decision was not without criticism or questioning.
Even if Prescott’s performance in the 2021 regular season was nothing to sneeze at, throwing for 4,449 yards (second career haul), 68.8% completions and 37 touchdown passes (both NFL-highs), his numbers on Sunday were the opposite extreme.
Prescott completed 23 of 43 passes for 254 yards with one touchdown pass. and another intercepted, was sacked five times and finished the game with a 69.3 passer rating. Also, he ran for another touchdown.
To put more salt in the wound, Prescott commanded the drive that could have given the team victory in the final seconds of the fourth quarter., but without timeouts to ask for, things got complicated. The passer chose to run through the center of the field with 14 seconds remaining to get closer to the red zone and try one last play that could achieve the miracle.
However, instead of handing the ball to the umpire, that is, the person in charge of placing the ball for the restart, he wanted to place it, which caused the referee to collide with the center of Dallas and hesitate to place the ball so that Prescott hit it on the floor, the clock stops and the last chance arrives. That didn’t happen, the game was over and the nightmare came again.
The corridor Ezekiel Elliott, receivers CeeDee Lamb y Amari Cooper They make up a respectable combo of offensive players to complement Prescott’s talent. That’s why Jones didn’t hold his tongue when expressing his frustration with the result.
“When you have this combination of players together, you have to be successful,” the Cowboys owner said.
After almost a decade with Jason Garrett at the helm as head coach (with a total of three trips to the postseason and two wins), from 2010 to 2019, and also with relative boredom because the team was stagnant in the same instance of the Divisional Playoff, Jones opted for a change of direction by using a coach who already knew the route to lift the Vince Lombardi trophy.
With the idea of repeating the formula Mike McCarthy arrived in Dallas for 2020, whose highest achievement on his resume was having guided the Green Bay Packers to be crowned in Super Bowl XLV in 2010 when they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers that time.
After an unsuccessful first season, going 6-10, largely caused by Prescott’s season-ending injury in Week 5, that of 2021 was presented as the great opportunity for redemption for McCarthy, also with his stellar quarterback happy and focused with his new –and onerous– contract.
With a record of 12-5 in the regular season, Dallas knew how to take advantage of the ‘poverty’ in terms of the level of its rivals in the Eastern Division of the National Conference, to the degree of winning six of the six duels against Washington, NY Giants and Philadelphia. But that was just a disguise that didn’t hold up against the 49ers.
Dallas was the most penalized team in the NFL in the regular phase, committing a total of 127 infractions, at a rate of almost seven and a half per game and with more than a thousand yards (1,103) of penalty. But against San Francisco the team did nothing to remedy that and ended with 14 penalties, another reason he paid for a new deletion.
When will that time come when the Cowboys transcend again in an NFL postseason? No one knows for sure, but what is a reality is that the bottle of patience of the owner and that of many team fans is emptying.
