It’s Deja Vu All Over Again: Your 2021 Dallas Cowboys Preview

OK, I was about halfway through a detailed, position-by-position breakdown of the 2021 Cowboys season, with additional commentary on the draft and free agency. And then Hurricane Henri decided to hook left and take the eye pretty much over my house, so I don’t think we’re going to have power much longer. Let’s do this.

Jerry Jones cried at his press conference and said that he’d do anything humanly possible to get back to the Super Bowl, but apparently that doesn’t include firing himself as the GM, so the Cowboys won’t be seeing the Super Bowl on anything but TV for some time to come. Dak Prescott is coming off a dislocated ankle and compound fracture of his lower leg, and while he’s recently incredibly wealthy, (4 years, $160 million), questions remain about how well he’ll recover. And he also may have something wrong with his shoulder, too. Shoulders and legs aren’t important to QBs, are they?

Dallas did nothing to address their increasingly aged and infirm offensive line, other than draft a guy in the 4th round who left Florida State after being accused of dating violence. Yay. The line has gone from a strength to a problem, and with Zeke Elliott in his 6th year, (the average NFL RB has a career between 3 and 4 years), and coming off his worst year in terms of production, (less than 1,000 yards and 6 TDs), that’s not a great combination. The WR/TE corps is, at least on paper, maybe the best in the league, (Cooper, Lamb, Gallup, Jarwin, some guy out of Stanford that everyone seems to thinks was a good draft pick), but if Prescott doesn’t get any time, and/or opposing defenses don’t credit the run and play 6 guys in coverage, that won’t matter.

The defense was ass last year, setting records from most point and yards given up. Micah Parsons has potential to be a monster LB, but if he has no help it’s not going to matter. The Cowboys desperately needed CB help, then watched helplessly in the 10th position as the Panthers and Broncos took the top 2 at 8 and 9. They did pick up a kid out of Kentucky in the second round who seems at least as interested in a rap career, (check out YKDV Bossman Fat!), as he does in football, so there’s that.

The biggest thing the Cowboys did on defense was fire Mike Nolan. They brought in Dan Quinn, which seems ominous at best given his assoication with the number 28 and 3. Quinn did, however, lead a great Seahawks defense as a coordinator, (although he had the Legion of Boom to help him, and he does not have that, at all, in Dallas), so if he can just get the D from “historically awful”, (thanks si.com), to “sort of mediocre”, it would be a vast improvement.

Mike McCarthy remains the head coach, and that will likely remain a problem. He has a history of playing not to lose, not adapting well to in game situations, and allegations for liking naps more than game prep. Fortunately he also alienates his players to the point where they’ll say things like this about him, (just ask potential Jeopardy! host Aaron Rodgers), in public. And in private in Dallas, where those same sorts of things were said, (albeit off the record), in his very first year.

I still don’t give a shit about the kicker or punter.

The Cowboys are still in the NFC East, and it’s still a dumpster fire. The Eagles don’t have a QB and are probably a good year away from achieving their rebuilding goals. The Giants are getting into preseason brawls within their own team that leave their starting QB on the bottom of the pile, (although Jones is a turnover machine anyway, so that might have been deliberate), and seem to have more questions than answers for the umpteenth year running. Washington slowly built a monster front-7 and also brought in Ryan Fitzpatrick, (he went to Harvard; I don’t know if you know that), to stabilize the QB position. It pains me to say this, but Washington is probably the class of the division, even if that is a bar low enough for a snake to hurdle. Everyone else plays for second, and none of them will be getting a wild card.

While the Cowboys have, apparently, the second-easiest, schedule in the league, I still don’t see them going more than 8-9, 9-8, maybe 10-7. Another year without a Super Bowl. Jerry, you know what you have to do.