In the 1976 film, Network, UBS anchor Howard Beale tells his viewers that “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
With 1:50 left in the first half, as Darnell Savage ran back a 64-yard Pick Six, I was Howard Beale like I’ve never been before in my life.
I’ve never been as angry, or disgusted, with the Dallas Cowboys as I am today. How about you?
Are you “mad as hell” yet? Are you going to take this anymore?
We are now 28 years removed from the last time the Dallas Cowboys played in an NFC Championship game or a Super Bowl.
Six head coaches have come and gone in that span. Dozens of players have wasted their careers here without so much as winning a divisional round game.
Eight NFC East titles, a 5-6 record in Wild Card games, and a 0-7 record in the Divisional round are all they have to show for it.
And that just isn’t good enough.
Heads Need To Roll
If I lived in Texas I can almost guarantee you I’d have been in the parking lot at The Star before sunrise this morning.
I’d have a guillotine and a stack of body bags piled up next to it too. There’s a whole lot of folks that need to be unemployed today.
Sunday’s 48-32 loss to the Green Bay Packers needs to be the final nail in several professional coffins.
I don’t care about three straight 12-5 records and two divisional titles. They mean nothing.
I’ve said even before the season began, at minimum, the Dallas Cowboys needed to make the NFC Championship game or else.
The same went for Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott too.
Well, good morning and welcome to “Or Else.” And the first head to roll is the highest in the building.
Jerry Jones Needs To Go Away
Jerry Jones can remain the owner. But he needs to be an absent one.
And if he refuses to go quietly, Stephen Jones needs to check him into a retirement home and put him on the strongest meds they have.
No more radio shows. No more interviews.
Don’t show up to work at the office and if he insists on attending games at Jerry World then put up one-way glass on his suite.
We don’t want to see him at the games on TV any more than we want to see Taylor Swift at Chiefs games.
We’re done with you, Jerry. It’s not us, it’s you.
“I don’t have any comments, questions or answers on why we didn’t do what we wanted to do tonight,” Jones told reporters, per NFL Network’s Clayton Holloway. “I won’t get into any of the addressing of coaches, personnel, any of it.”
Well, Jerry, we’re more than willing to if you won’t. The common denominator in the last 28 years of frustration in Dallas is you, Jerry.
After over a quarter-century of underachievement, the jury is in: You don’t know how to build an NFL roster that can win a Super Bowl.
So stand down and let someone take over that can.
Make Will McClay a real GM, with the full powers that come with the job.
He cuts the deadweight. He trades whoever he needs to trade and drafts whoever he needs to draft.
In short, build a team that will win a football game after the first weekend of January.
Once that’s done, Jerry Sr., Stephen, Charlotte, and Jerry Jr. all need to spend their NFL Sundays at church, or the country club. Anywhere but AT&T Stadium.
Sweep Out The Coaches’ Offices
With McClay fully in charge, there isn’t one coach that should keep his job after Sunday.
Seattle wants Dan Quinn? Take him, Al Harris, and the rest of the defensive coaches too for that matter.
Mike McCarthy?
Get out. And every offensive coach on staff should be a half-step behind you out the door.
Special Teams coach John Fassel?
Beat it. If you can’t get Sam Williams to stop making stupid penalties on special teams you have no place here either.
You all had the No. 2 seed. You had a home playoff game against a quarterback making his first post-season start.
And you turned him into Aaron Rodgers 2.0.
Clean out your desks.
And we don’t need to bring in Bill Belichick either. We’ve seen how bringing in a washed-up former Patriots head coach plays out.
Remember the four-year run of Bill Parcells in Dallas?
We don’t want that again.
Nor do we need to bring in another retread from the coaching carousel. We’ve had four years of that with McCarthy.
Find innovative, up-and-coming, young coaches on both sides of the ball.
Coaches who can gameplan and motivate their teams to get it done when the playoffs begin.
Rebuild The Roster
With very few exceptions, the 53-man roster needs a massive overhaul.
We’ll start at quarterback. Dak Prescott is not it.
He’s not Roger Staubach or Troy Aikman.
He’s not even Don Meredith or Craig Morton. At least they got the Cowboys to their league championship games.
He’s not even Danny White – who at least got Dallas to three straight NFC Championship games.
At best, he’s Tony Romo 2.0. That’s not good enough.
Prescott has not earned an extension – despite a solid regular season in 2023.
Yes, he cut down on the turnovers and questionable passes. In the regular season.
But what did he revert to on Sunday?
Turnover Dak. For the second straight year, he tossed two first-half picks in a playoff game.
Good regular season numbers are meaningless without postseason success. Prescott is 2-5 in the playoffs.
He’s had eight seasons to prove himself.
All he has proven is that he’s not the one.
Tony Pollard has to go too. He isn’t an RB1 and he shouldn’t be paid like one.
Michael Gallup, Tyron Smith, and Terence Steele also need to move on.
The defense is not spared either. Sam Williams needs to take his bone-headed plays at the worst possible time elsewhere.
Stephon Gilmore was burned so many times in the last few weeks Gordon Ramsey called him a doughnut.
It’s time to clean house and rebuild.
We’re mad as hell, Jerry, and we’re not going to take this anymore.
16.
That’s the average number that the Cowboys scored against good teams, (Bills-10, Dolphins-20, Lions-20) late in the year. And sure enough, what did they score until very late in the game when the game was basically OVER – 16 POINTS.
7 points in the second quarter and 9 in the third quarter. The other 16 points were MEANINGLESS as the Packers were packing up their bags already.
I commented about this disturbing trend and in fact questioned you Richard about it in one of your articles previously.
I was not very surprised by this debacle, as with this QB1 under center, there has been a track record that EVERYONE can easily see if they want to see.
Yesterday he AGAIN played up to that same track record. I mean it’s been EIGHT YEARS NOW. How much does one have to see before the reality sinks in. 2 first round playoff wins, a two-point win vs Seattle and beating a near 50-year-old QB who had one foot in retirement already.
THATS IT in eight years with GOOD supporting casts AND different coaching staffs.
Years ago, and perhaps even today, there was/is a word for players who played their best in the brightest lights – CLUTCH.
This QB is apparently NOT CLUTCH.
He is definitely not clutch at all.
He is very crutch, though. He’s always “sorry”, “embarrassed”, and ready to promise to “never let this happen again”…until the next time it inevitably happens. I’m sick of hearing him use his “professional” and “nice guy” image as a crutch to say all the things he knows people want to hear, only to do the same wrong things over and over.
He still struggles with post-snap reads. He still struggles to hit receivers in stride unless he can lay it up and give them time to adjust underneath it. He still overthrows and underthrows receivers on the regular. He still gets mentally taken out of his game. I thought he had finally kicked the “slow start/hero comeback” tendency, but I was wrong.
I saw an article where the author was ripping on Ceedee Lamb’s body language in the first half of the game. Yeah, it wasn’t good, but it’s hard to blame him when he’s had a front-row seat to the same bad movie over and over again. He’s seen the signs, he’s seen the off-target/out-of-sync passes coming his way. Can’t blame him for not being excited to see it playing out yet again when it matters the most.
I’m with you on the whole accuracy thing and ever since he started.
My heart is in my mouth every time he lets go of the ball. It’s either high over the head (with the odd ‘heaven’ ball) or slightly behind and Receivers have been bailing him out every year. People can blame Gallup for lack of separation all they want, but he’s never created separation so it was no different this year. He was just good at grabbing a tough pass and it let Dak off the hook many a time.
In similar fashion to the offense scoring/production in key games was our D pass rush. We hid behind impressive stats from the start of the season, but at the back end when we were playing the better teams, we couldn’t even sack Boris Yeltsin if he were working behind the Cheers bar (and 4 late sacks against Washington doesn’t count for toffee). Sure, pressures force QB’s into rash plays but a sack does actually help once in a while! Apart from extending the chains, it’s a killer play that makes a statement and makes O Coordinators re-think their strategy a bit more. They’re less likely to counter a sack than a simple pressure.
That said, the D could play hot & cold and I can live with that against better teams. What I can’t stand is consistent poor coaching……O-line was the achilles heel all season. I actually thought Pollard ran well in the second half of the season and did look like a RB1, despite what people say. He just couldn’t do anything behind such a lateral blocking scheme. Our best running was off basic downhill double teams. I just hope that if we bring in one of these ‘younger’ minds behind McCarthy that we do so as an O-line coach in place of Solari.
We actually had another ‘great wall of Dallas’ again this year – trouble was, it was stuck on the line of scrimmage and stopping our Rb’s from getting through!
movie stars do not win football games. Football players win football games.
Need to change culture from flashy style to grindstone style. Players need to stay out of the spotlight!
Indeed. I used to think Micah Parsons was quite mature and astute in his rookie years. Now I think he’s a whinger. And I don’t even watch podcasts or follow anyone on X.
I’ll keep this short! MM is a good coach but against SF, BB, And GB, they out coached and out schemed us so bad that an arm chair QB like myself could see it! I’ve come to the conclusion
That MM is trying to be a buddy to all these guys on this team and not the disciplinarian that he needs to be ! This team is not disciplined to say the least! The penalties alone this year and last year shows that! As for DQ any team that gets him is just plane stupid! He is a decent DC but as a head coach …..we seen what he did in Atlanta! I’ve been a Cowboy fan for 52 years and this is the first time that I’am ashamed to let people know!! Come on Jerry you owe it to the Cowboy fans to hire a general manager (Troy Aikman) or (Emmitt Smith) that will take us to a championship level!!