Jerry Jones is very familiar with the fact that it has now been 30 years since his team scaled the highest heights. He’s well aware of the chart that shows the Cowboys have gone twice as long as any team in the NFC without reaching the conference title game.
“I’m looking forward to next year and getting back to that championship game and maybe beyond,” Jones said. “And then I’ll be right at the top of the list of how long it’s been. Right at the top. And this will all go away.”
It will be months before we know how many buy into that level of Cowboys optimism for 2026. In Jerry’s words, the offense is very good with Dak “and I think we have the bones of a heck of a defense.”
Seems more like bones is all that will be left when their opponents finish with them in 2025. Having surrendered 454 points and threatening to become the first Dallas team ever to allow 30 per game, the Cowboys are just four behind the awful Cincinnati defense for most points allowed.
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Jerry sees his willingness to change as a reason for even more optimism. But to frustrated fans, it can seem like nothing ever really changes here except for the fact that this club set a record. It’s going to be the first in Cowboys history to finish top five in total offense and points scored and miss the playoffs. Not really the place where you want to be making history.
But the thing I struggle with the most is the sense that it’s a fluke that Dallas hasn’t advanced deep into the playoffs for 30 years. At Brian Schottenheimer‘s introductory news conference, Stephen Jones referred to it as “this so-called drought.” Jerry has talked many times about this team having been “around the rim” during this run as if they were the Buffalo Bills just butting their heads up against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Reality says something different. Reality says the Cowboys have not been very good.
Yes, there are a number of teams with worse won-loss percentages over this 30-year period. Dallas, especially, under Jason Garrett as head coach, has mastered the art of the 8-8 season. And with the Commanders on Christmas Day and the Giants next Sunday finishing out the schedule, the Cowboys stand a reasonable chance of becoming the NFL’s second 8-8-1 team in the days of the 17-game schedule.
Darn those 2022 Commanders for keeping the Cowboys from another slice of history.
What matters in professional sports is playoff performance. That’s what kills Cowboys fans, the fact that their team could go to the NFC Championship Game 16 times from 1966-1995, the start of the Super Bowl era, and then take a big goose egg for the next 30 years. And the idea that the Cowboys have been close?
The ”Dez caught it” argument got them close. If Bryant is ruled to have caught a touchdown in Green Bay 11 years ago, then the Cowboys are close to a trip to Seattle for the title game. But more than four minutes remained in a game Dallas would have led either 27-26 or 29-26. The Packers had scored on their last three drives. That was a close call, but it’s not a done deal the Cowboys would have won the game without the overturn.
More Aaron Rodgers‘ magic stopped the Cowboys a week shy of the NFC title game in 2016. And a 21-17 loss at home to New York in 2007 (the first of Eli Manning’s two unlikely Super Bowl runs) stalled that season. The other divisional losses — Carolina (26-17) in 1996, Minnesota (34-3) in 2009 and the Rams (30-22) in 2018 — did not go down to the wire.
For the 30-year run, Dallas has won five playoff games. Same number as Joe Burrow, who gave the Cowboys a 25-year head start before his first playoff game. The Cowboys’ five playoff wins place them 13th in the NFC, ahead of only Washington, Chicago and Detroit. Not a place of honor.
And if you don’t let yourself get obscured by all those non-losing 8-8 records, no matter how the Cowboys finish this season, this will mark the 15th time in 30 years they have failed to finish with a winning record. If they don’t win both road games, it will be their 10th losing record in this span.
For 20 years, from 1966 through 1985, the Cowboys had winning seasons. In this 30-year stretch, they are coughing up three non-winning seasons for fans to swallow for every playoff victory achieved.
That’s not around any kind of rim. And if you recognize the history of the Cowboys franchise that Jones initially built strongly upon during Jimmy Johnson’s time here, these 30 years represent a drought that longtime fans and former players can’t even imagine is actually happening.
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