The regular season has come to a close and the Dallas Cowboys have widely exceeded expectations.
Not from the start of the season because we all know the Cowboys usually start each season in the Super Bowl conversation.
Instead, the expectations completely changed after a loss to winless Arizona in Week 3 followed by a terrible 32-point loss at San Francisco in Week 5.
Post San Francisco, the Cowboys sat with a 3-2 record and it felt inevitable their ceiling for a playoff berth was no more than a Wildcard appearance.
A switch flipped after Week 5, and the Cowboys would go on to finish the season on a 9-3 run.
They finished with 12 wins for the third consecutive season, winning the NFC East and securing the 2nd seed in the conference.
Fans might have been surprised to hear that Mike McCarthy is the only head coach in Dallas Cowboys history to accomplish that feat.
Those are the types of things I want to highlight in this article.
Take a virtual walk with me through The Star while I point out my personal top three observations from the Dallas Cowboys 2023 regular season.
The Prescott To Lamb Connection
How can I start anywhere else?
This is actually a 2-for-1 here because I could easily list the amount of pre-season doubt for Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb separately.
After an interception-riddled 2022 season, the questions surrounding Prescott were whether or not he was the answer moving forward for the Cowboys at quarterback.
True fans who know ball understand that approximately half of Prescott's interceptions were simple miscommunication or tipped passes.
Prescott's 2022 campaign was the exception, not the rule, and he got back to taking supreme care of the football this season.
The 8th-year pro had the best season of his career, finishing with 4,516 yards on 69.5% completions with 36 touchdown passes to just nine interceptions.
He is thrust into the thick of the NFL MVP race, and although he will probably finish in second behind Lamar Jackson, the statement has been made.
Dak Prescott can absolutely get the job done in the NFL, and he will be the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys for years to come.
As far as CeeDee Lamb goes, he not only had a career season but also broke franchise records set by previous 88s.
According to reports, Lamb respectfully approached McCarthy after the San Francisco loss to basically say “Give me the ball”.
McCarthy, perhaps feeling something needed to be done to spark a middling offensive attack, obliged and the rest is history, literally.
From Week 6 forward, Lamb led the league in receptions (108), yards (1,391), touchdowns (11), and 15+ yard receptions (36).
It took Lamb 12 games to accomplish what is considered to be top wide receiver numbers for an entire season.
In the final two weeks, Lamb took advantage of a torrent of targets from Prescott to rack up 26 receptions for 325 yards and three touchdowns.
Those numbers raised his season totals to 135 receptions for 1,749 yards and 12 touchdowns to shatter the single-season franchise marks (111 for 1,603) set by Michael Irvin.
The best part about all of this is we can expect this connection to continue much like the Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams duo in Green Bay while McCarthy was there.
The Dominance of Micah Parsons
Barring some sort of tomfoolery from the voting committee, Micah Parsons will earn his third straight 1st team All-Pro nod to start his career.
He put himself in rare company after recording his 14th sack of the season in the finale at Washington.
The 3rd quarter sack of Sam Howell put Parsons at 40.5 sacks for his career and put his name into an elite group of pass rushers to reach 40 sacks in their first three seasons.
Parsons joins Reggie White (52.5), Derrick Thomas (43.5), Aldon Smith (42.0), and Dwight Freeney (40.0) as the only players to do so.
The versatile linebacker led the entire league in pressure rate by a wide margin.
He accomplished that feat despite also facing the 2nd-highest double-team rate of any other qualified player. Only Myles Garrett had more.
If triple-teams were a recorded metric, I'm sure he would lead that category as well.
One would think that a player with the most pressures in the NFL and the 2nd-highest double-team rate would average at least two holding calls per game, right?
Wrong. Parsons wasn't awarded a single holding call by officials for the final 11.5 games of the season.
Yes, you read that correctly. 11.5 games. 46 quarters. 690 minutes of gameplay.
Whichever way you want to slice it, it's a travesty of the highest order that has gotten national media attention.
The NFL officials have missed so many holding calls that Micah could use the photos to make a calendar each year until 2030.
I think I figured out the answer. Everyone knows Shaq, right?
No, not Shaq Leonard from that green team. The original Shaq, Shaquille O'Neal.
Shaq was so dominant in the paint with the ball in his hands that officials could have called a foul on defenders every time he drove to the basket.
Calling a foul on every trip down the floor would be terrible for the game, and I believe Parsons is receiving that treatment.
He's so dominant that he is held every time he rushes the passer, but the odd part is that Micah isn't even drawing the occasional flag.
Officials have decided to ignore it completely.
Hopefully, they've been saving all of those flags from the previous 11.5 games to use them all on the Cowboys' playoff run.
Overcoming Injuries
Every NFL team has injuries on an annual basis.
How teams respond to those injuries is a determining factor in how the season ends.
The Cowboys are no strangers to injuries over the years and certainly know the ramifications of losing a superstar.
Under the Jason Garrett regime, one key injury seemed to derail the entire season more often than not.
I would pull my hair out trying to figure out why other teams could still win after losing a top player to injury but my team could not.
It's understandable to lose Tony Romo, the star quarterback, and see the ceiling of your offense plummet.
But why could they never protect the quarterback when Tyron Smith would sit out with an injury?
Why would the entire defense crumble if Sean Lee had to miss a game?
Under McCarthy that hasn't been the case.
Trying to pinpoint why is another article altogether, but I sure am grateful for the change.
Dallas famously weathered the five-game absence of Dak Prescott to an injured thumb with a record of 4-1 last year.
This season, there have been major injuries on the defensive side of the ball.
First, star CB Trevon Diggs tore his ACL in practice before a Week 3 matchup at Arizona that Dallas would end up losing.
A couple of weeks later, Dallas lost another stalwart on the defense when a neck injury versus San Francisco forced LB Leighton Vander Esch to miss the rest of the season.
How did this team respond?
Diggs was replaced by second-year CB DaRon Bland, and all he did was intercept nine passes, bringing five of them back for a touchdown to set an NFL single-season record.
Bland and veteran Stephon Gilmore have been one of the best cornerback duos in the NFL this season, and add in Jourdan Lewis playing nickel corner.
In Vander Esch's place, Damone Clark has improved each week and ended the regular season as the team's leader in tackles with 70.
To help Clark in the linebacker room, UDFA Markquese Bell moved over from the safety room and has been playing excellent football.
The fact that Bell is out of position makes his stellar play even more impressive, shining a light on the coaching staff for having the reserve players ready to go at a moment's notice.
That, I believe is the difference between this year's team from teams of the past.
This year's Dallas Cowboys are tough, resilient, adaptable, but most importantly focused on the task at hand.
The goal is the Super Bowl, and if the playoffs go anything like the regular season, we might see Cowboys fans take over Las Vegas in February.
