Lather, Rinse, Repeat: Your 2024 Dallas Cowboys

Oh good, this shit again.

When last seen, the Dallas Cowboys were coming off of a 12-5 record and first place finish in the NFC East, a conference powerful enough to include at least two professional teams.  The Cowboys parlayed that outstanding, and somewhat unexpected, regular season finish into, again, a first-round play-off loss to, again, the Green Bay Packers, in which, again, Dan Prescott played like a frightened school girl and in which, again, Mike McCarthy was thoroughly and completely out-coached.  The final score was 48-32 and it was not that close.

After yet another dispiriting post-season loss the Cowboys reacted by…(eventually), bringing back everyone and running it back.  They didn’t fire McCarthy, who has a long record of regular season success and abject post-season failures.  They didn’t move on from Dak Prescott and his by-now-established history of remarkable regular season success and equally remarkable ham-handed, (see what I did there?), failures in the post-season.  Nope, they’re both back, with McCarthy unlikely to change, (or he would have by now), and Dak, (who I am a huge fan of and whom I wish nothing but the best for), also seemingly having hit a ceiling, a ceiling that does not include the words ‘Super Bowl Champion.’

With the added bonus that Dak’s contract, if not renegotiated, will cost Dallas $95 million against the salary cap, which seems less than ideal for a guy who can’t get it done when it counts.

In the off-season the Cowboys lost Tyler Smith to the Washington Redacteds, who seem determined to continue their tradition of “rebuilding” through battered players long past their prime, Tyler Pollard to Don T’s Magnificent Tits, which, meh, whatever, RBs at this point are basically something you buy in bulk and see what happens, and C Tyler Biadasz to someone else I can’t remember right now.  Of those three Biadasz is the only one I’m concerned with, since centers are pretty important and I don’t recall Tyler sucking last year.

I don’t recall him excelling either.

They also lost Leighton Van der Esch, who retired after two serious neck injuries, and also to pursue his rightful claim to what I assume is a small duchy in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Here’s to hoping he doesn’t run afoul of the nefarious intents of a certain 911 operator in the Pittsburgh area but let’s face it, wouldn’t be the first time the high hopes of Dallas fell to those French-fry-eating-fuckers from Pittsburgh.

They might lose the as-yet-unsigned Stephen Gilmore, but he’s 33 and a cornerback, so whatever.

In response the plaintiff reloaded through the draft with a bunch of people I never heard of but who no one seems, overall, too impressed with.  I liked the Guyton pick, loved the Flournoy pick, and have no opinion about any of the others.  We’ll just have to see what happens.

In free agency the Cowboys, who Jerry Jones famously declared were “all in” on the subject, covered the Van der Esch retirement by replacing him with Eric Kendricks of the San Diego, (fuck you, Spanoi), Chargers.  He’s 32 and probably has his best years behind him, but he’s cheap and fills a need.  Good signing.  Then they resigned a bunch of their own guys, added Royce Freeman at RB, (again, who cares, dime a dozen), and proved they were indeed all in by signing the well known Trent Sieg to play…long snapper?

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Ol’ Double J is* also embroiled in a contract dispute with Cee Dee Lamb, so far refusing to extend his contract and expressing no sense of urgency to resign a guy who’s probably a Top 3, and certainly a Top 5, player at his position.  That position being WR and also being pretty fucking important when you’re clearly not worried about establishing even a presence of a running game.

Jones has since tried to walk back this sort of dipshittery, but it’s this kind of half-assed report that gave us umpteen years of Princeton Red and the current streak of Captain Blueberry somehow not getting fired and/or eating his way out of the league, all accompanied by a sense of urgency and need to win now that the Cincinnati Bengals would find lacking.

*was embroiled in a contract dispute with Cee Dee Lamb.  Just prior to this post going to…post, I guess, the genius brains in the Dallas front office managed to get Cee Dee to sign for $136 million for 5 years, including a $38 million bonus and $100 million of that money guaranteed.  I’m sure that this contract, and Dak’s contract, won’t play hell with the salary cap when Dallas needs to resign someone like Micah Parsons in the near future.

And that’s the main problem with the Dallas Cowboys:  Jerry and Stephen Jones think they’re excellent general managers, and they are not.  Their favored tactic of shit-talking looming must-have free agent players before finally resigning them at an absolute premium.  I’m sure they will eventually fudge the numbers enough to get Parsons resigned, and keep Dak and Cee Dee happy, but you need 22 players to win, not 3, and Dallas, under Jones & Son, is simply never going to have the salary cap competence to make that happen.

I looked at Dallas’s schedule for this season and for no real reason outside of recency bias and refusing to believe that Washington and the Giants can do anything right, I have them at 11-6.  That might win the NFC East.  Or it might not.  How’s that for analysis?  Either way, Dallas will get to the play-offs, and after that, the deluge.

Lather, rinse, repeat.