There’s no bigger brand in American sports than the Dallas Cowboys.
The mythology around ‘America’s Team’ – the nickname given to the powerhouse NFL franchise during their glory years – means they’re a perennial primetime TV fixture, delivering the ratings to go along with it.
In 2022 alone, seven of the most-watched 19 broadcasts on all of US television were a Cowboys game, capped off by their traditional Thanksgiving clash which drew 42.1 million viewers – the most for any regular season game, by far.
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In 2021 and 2022, it was a pair of losses to the San Francisco 49ers. The former saw an embarrassing clock management bungle which saw a run play from quarterback Dak Prescott with 14 seconds left, with the Cowboys then unable to get set to run another play before time expired. In the latter, down a touchdown in the final three minutes, they let an eternity tick off the clock before a cowardly late punt.
In 2018, they allowed the Los Angeles Rams to run for approximately one bajillion yards.
In 2014 and 2016, it was a pair of losses to the Green Bay Packers. The former featured enormous drama with a late Dez Bryant catch ruled incomplete upon review, based on an intense reading of what ‘possession’ means; the latter saw Aaron Rodgers convert a third-and-20 with 12 seconds left before a game-winning field goal.
Heck, you can even go back to 2006, when quarterback Tony Romo – after earning a Pro Bowl bid in his first season as the starter – botched the hold on a potential game-winning field goal with less than two minutes remaining against Seattle.
It is a history of chaos, blunders and heartbreak. While they were not always the favourite when losing these playoff games – they were the No.1 seed in 2006 and 2016, but were otherwise often on the road – the manner of these losses has created a simple narrative: the Cowboys are chokers.
This is harsh, and not the most analytically-minded critique, but the results speak for themselves. And until they actually prove everyone wrong on the field, it’ll exist.
Well, if it’s ever gonna happen, 2023 looks like as good a chance as any.
With four weeks left in the season, the Cowboys hold the No.2 seed in the NFC, only behind the 49ers thanks to the head-to-head tiebreaker; but they were a very different team in their 42-10 loss earlier this season.
Their oft-criticised coach Mike McCarthy came into the season pledging to revolutionise the Cowboys’ offence, dumping offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and wanting to run the ball more (even though the NFL as a whole has gone the other way) and slow down the offence.
“Kellen wants to light the scoreboard up. But I want to run the damn ball so I can rest my defence,” McCarthy proclaimed. And yes, you didn’t read that wrong – he was complaining about how many points his team was scoring.
So McCarthy changed the offence, with many more short throws… and the team was worse.
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To his credit, McCarthy realised he had stuffed up, because he reverted many of the changes after their Week 7 bye – bringing back a lot of the Moore offensive traits, like receivers going in motion, running empty formations without another man in the backfield alongside the QB, and using bunch formations which can both create blocks on defenders and force them to make a dangerous choice between covering the side of the field with all-world receiver CeeDee Lamb or multiple, still dangerous targets like tight end Jake Ferguson, receiver Brandin Cooks and running back Tony Pollard.
But most importantly they started chucking the ball deep again. And it has turned Dak Prescott into an MVP candidate.
Over the past 10 games, Prescott has become an explosive play machine, with a 20+ yard play on over 11 per cent of his dropbacks.
Yet he was also making explosive plays last year. The difference is he’s not throwing interceptions alongside them.
McCarthy was clearly sick of the picks, and that’s part of the reason he focused the offence on shorter throws. But it neutered Prescott, a QB who throws some of the best and most accurate deep balls in the sport.
Historically his interception rate has been much lower than what we saw in 2022 – 15 picks in just 12 games, a 3.8% rate per throw – and Prescott has not only reverted to his career mean in 2023, but gone past it.
You’re not supposed to be able to combine explosive plays and a minuscule interception rate (on pace for 1.3%), because by definition the big throws that create explosive plays are more risky and thus create interceptions. But it’s what Prescott is doing.
So can he be the MVP? Well, importantly he has to keep winning – 11 of the last 14 MVPs have come from a No.1 seed, plus two from a No.2 seed. The other top candidate right now, Brock Purdy, is being credited with the 49ers’ success even though he’s effectively just the greatest game manager in history; the Niners have a crazy good offence because they have crazy good weapons and a crazy good offensive mind coaching them, not Purdy. But Purdy is helming the No.1 seed as it stands, so he’s gonna poll votes.
Purely on performance, Prescott or someone like Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson – or even a skill position player, like Miami’s Tyreek Hill, or Niners weapons Deebo Samuel and Christian McCaffrey – make more sense. But it’ll be a QB, because it’s always a QB.
So if Prescott can get the Cowboys a top-two seed, he’ll have a huge shot at the MVP crown, and will have positioned the side right in the mix for an NFC Championship Game appearance.
There are just a couple of problems with that.
First, the schedule. Dallas has the edge on Philadelphia right now due to their divisional winning percentage (4-1 vs 3-1), but unless the Eagles lose to the Giants in one of their two remaining meetings that’ll close up. The Eagles then have a better conference record, with two NFC losses to Dallas’ three.
But more importantly Dallas is just more likely to drop another game. They’re away to Buffalo and Miami over the next fortnight, followed by a home game with a sliding-but-still-solid Detroit on New Year’s Eve. Philly plays at Seattle next week but then gets the Giants twice and the Cardinals.
If the Cowboys don’t win the division, they’ll still get the fifth seed and smash whichever woeful NFC South champion hosts their wildcard game. But then they’d likely be at Philadelphia or San Francisco in the divisional round, instead of hosting a team like Detroit or the Eagles.
Secondly… well, remember what we said about the Cowboys not often being the favourite when they lose in the playoffs?
Right now it’s clear Philadelphia isn’t the best team in the conference, having lost two straight with their defence genuinely bad at the moment, but neither is Dallas. It’s San Francisco.
The 49ers, when healthy, are unstoppable on offence and damn good on defence. The respected DVOA metric says they’re the fifth-best team through 13 games in the stat’s history (since 1981), only behind the 2007 New England, 1991 Washington, 1985 Chicago and 1998 Denver teams… aka three Super Bowl champions plus the Patriots, who were unbeaten until Eli Manning and David Tyree’s heroics.
They’ve lost three games this year, but those were also the only three games which Hall of Fame lineman Trent Williams and unique receiving/running weapon Deebo Samuel either missed or didn’t finish. With the superstar pair playing, they’re unbeaten.
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It’s the Niners’ defence that has caused the Cowboys the most problems in their last three meetings, holding Dallas to 17, 12 and 10 points, including two post-season losses. The biggest margin of the lot came back in Week 5, when the 49ers won 42-10.
But as mentioned, the Cowboys offence has changed since then. They may struggle to stop the Niners’ offence, but the Niners may struggle to stop this new-look, precise deep-ball attack too.
The Cowboys are no slouches; heading into the Monday night games of Week 14, they were fifth in DVOA, narrowly behind Miami and Kansas City, with San Francisco and Baltimore the clear top two. They’re an all-around threat, sixth in both offence and defence, but trending upwards (especially the former) and look like the second-best team in the NFC at worst.
Ideally, for the neutral, the Eagles will pull things together and create a true three-team race in the NFC playoffs. But there’s a scenario where the Cowboys slip up in the last four weeks, and Philly limps into the No.2 seed to avoid both San Francisco and Dallas in the divisional round, then heads into the NFC title game as the underdog (assuming their defence still stinks and they can’t really run the ball like they used to).
So that’s why the Cowboys need to win the East. Win the division, earn a top-two seed – maybe even the No.1 and the bye? – and a first appearance in the NFC title game since 1995 looms large.
And from there, if they’re already making history, why not a bit more?
The Super Bowl gets over 110 million viewers as it is. With the Cowboys involved, it might literally be every TV in America tuned in.
