If it weren’t for the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Dallas Cowboys would be the most disappointing team of the 2024 NFL season.
Sure, the Cowboys are .500 at 3-3, but that’s a particularly bad .500, especially after many picked them to win the NFC East and potentially even the whole conference.
Of their three wins, only one — against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 5 — looks particularly good in retrospect. Their other two wins are against teams that are a collective 3-9. And, of their three losses, Sunday’s loss — at home against the Detroit Lions — was the worst.
Not only the worst this season, mind you. It’s the worst home loss since Jerry Jones became the team’s owner, president and general manager in 1989, as The Washington Post noted. This includes the 1-15 Cowboys of 1989, a team so terrible those who remember them are halfway surprised they didn’t find a way to win a negative number of games.
So, after the 47-9 loss to the Detroit Lions at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Sunday, Jones decided it was time for some heads to realize they were potentially on the chopping block.
And those heads belonged to … um, some sports radio hosts that asked him about the Cowboys’ pitiful performance, causing Jerry to melt down. You may perhaps begin to see where the problems lie in Dallas.
“This is not your job,” Jones, a Pro Football Hall-of-Famer, told hosts Shan Shariff and R.J. Choppy of 105.3 The Fan during a phone interview from an Atlanta league meeting.
“Your job isn’t to let me go over all the reasons that I did something, and I’m sorry that I did it. That’s not your job. … I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions, man,” he added.
Should changes be made to the Cowboys leadership?
“I’m not kidding. You’re not going to figure it out what the team is doing right or wrong. If you are, or any five or 10 like you, you need to come to this meeting I’m going to today with 32 teams here. You’re geniuses,.”
“You really think you’re gonna sit here with a microphone and tell me all of the things that I’ve done wrong and without going over the rights? Now listen, we both know we’re talking to a lot of great fans, a lot of great listeners. And I’m very sorry for what happened out there Sunday. I’m sick about what happened Sunday.”
Jerry Jones didn’t like getting questioned about the Cowboys’ offseason during his appearance on 105.3 The Fan.
“Your job isn’t to let me to go over all the reasons that I did something… that’s not your job. I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions. I’m not kidding.” pic.twitter.com/Po2LJ8f6cX
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 15, 2024
Jones, 82, may be in Canton, but he’s constantly had to allay suspicions that he’s past the point of diminishing returns as president and general manager for some time now. The last time the Cowboys have made it past the divisional round of the playoffs was in the 1995 season, when they were Super Bowl champions.
Current head coach Mike McCarthy has taken the Cowboys to three consecutive playoff appearances and 12-5 records, but he’s also 1-3 in the playoffs.
On Sunday, the Cowboys took a 3-0 lead, only to see the Lions score the next 27 points. A second field goal by kicker Brandon Aubrey made it 27-6 shortly before the half. Another long Aubrey field goal was the only scoring Dallas put up in the second half as they were outscored 20-3 there.
In addition to the 47-9 final score, the Lions forced five turnovers from the Cowboys while turning the ball over zero times themselves, and had 492 net yards compared to Dallas’ 251, according to ESPN.
Dallas QB Dak Prescott, fresh off a record-breaking contract and a shot at the Cowboys’ bandwagon fans after a loss to the Baltimore Ravens — whatever may still exist, given the team’s woes over the past 30 seasons — was a miserable 17/33 for 178 yards and two interceptions.
Dallas’ rushing game, which has been appalling all season and is the worst in the NFL, with the lead rusher being Rico Dowdle, who gained 25 yards on five carries. As a team, the Cowboys have gotten a little over 77 yards a game from the ground game in 2024, which is pitiful.
But you know who really needs to get fired to fix this silver-and-blue dumpster fire? Shan & R.J. in the morning on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas! That’s going to fix things posthaste.
As for anyone else getting fired — say, head coach Mike McCarthy — Jones was in a similarly ornery mood with Messrs. Shariff and Choppy.
“That would be a hypothetical. In that matter, do you think I’m an idiot? Do you?” he said. “OK. Well, I’m not going to hypothetical with you about would I consider a coaching change in light of the timing we’re sitting here with. I’m not. At all.”
Shan was a little confused: “Is this real life???” he posted on X. “I WISH Jerry Jones paid me. He insults us again and we’ve had back and forth over WAY bigger things in our 14 years.”
Is this real life???
I WISH Jerry Jones paid me
He insults us again and we’ve had back and forth over WAY bigger things in our 14 years.I truly don’t understand what the hell is going on.
Full thoughts tomorrow morning @1053thefan #ShanandRJ https://t.co/axgXqhZSWd— Shan Shariff (@1053SS) October 15, 2024
“I truly don’t understand what the hell is going on.” Well, that makes you and Jerry.
The Cowboys are by no means out of it; they’re still tied for second in the division in wins with a Philadelphia Eagles team that’s 3-2, both behind a Washington Commanders team that has way over-performed at 4-2.
However, here’s the thing: The Commanders seem to be for real, with QB Jayden Daniels being the breakout star of the 2024 draft class and new head coach Dan Quinn having done a revitalization job on that team posthaste. Every year, the analysts seem to miss big on one team, and everyone who predicted that the Commanders were the league’s worst team on paper — even worse than the Carolina Panthers, Tennessee Titans or every other beleaguered team currently sitting on one win — certainly seem to be that franchise.
Meanwhile, the impression that the Eagles left at the tail end of the 2023 season — where they dropped six of their last seven games after starting 10-1, including a Wild Card loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — was that the league had largely figured them out. They’ve given off the same vibes in 2024, as well; their first win was against the Green Bay Packers in a game largely dominated by questions over the suitability of the turf used during the NFL’s first-ever game in Brazil.
Their other two wins are against the New Orleans Saints — a team that looked better than it was after it started 2-0 by thrashing both the Cowboys and Panthers and has since dropped four straight — and the lowly Browns. Its losses are against the Buccaneers and Atlanta Falcons, both teams that look like stellar performers only when compared against the rest of the NFC South.
Then there’s the 2-4 New York Giants, who should either be thankful they somehow have two wins or cursing themselves for getting those two wins and hurting their chances at the No. 1 draft spot, which they richly deserve. We’ll just leave it there; as a Giants fan, any further digressions into how awful this team is will simply twist the knife more.
The point is this: Perhaps the Commanders collapse down the stretch, and there’s no one else to win the division, and maybe the Cowboys back in with a 10-7 record. Or maybe they qualify for the Wild Card with that record. Are they going to go far? Anything can happen — but if past performance is indicative of future results, I wouldn’t bet on it, figuratively or literally. And I wouldn’t even bet on them finishing with a winning record, not after that 47-9 thrashing at home.
I don’t know how many other ways I can say that this is not a good team, at least not right now. Moreover, it’s a much-hyped not-very-good team assembled by Jerry Jones through personnel decisions Jones has made because Jones refuses to relinquish the power to make said decisions to someone younger and wiser.
But you know who really should be held to account? Those sports radio dudes asking some pretty mild questions about what the guy who’s gotten Dallas into this expensive mess plans to do about getting them out of it. How ’bout them Cowboys?!
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