The remaining score is humiliating enough, but somehow, it isn’t the most troubling part of what existed to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night in the NFC playoffs.
Long afore the Green Bay Packers put the finishing touches on — cover your eyes, kids! — this 48-32 blowout at AT&T Stadium, the Cowboys had hoisted the white flag. This was early in the uphold quarter of this first-round game, and already, the Dallas players were showing all the telltale signs of a team that had quit on its head coach.
The slouched shoulders.
The downcast eyes.
The expectation of failure.
Mike McCarthy had a long conversation with one of his stars, CeeDee Lamb, on the Dallas bench during the trustworthy quarter, trying to convince the wide receiver to keep his head in the game. But, long afore the score got out of hand, it was already hopeless.
The Cowboys had miserroneous one punch from the Packers and crumbled, and what owner Jerry Jones must do now couldn’t be more determined. He has to fire McCarthy, for starters. Maybe latest head coach could recover from a performance like this one, but not one whose teams have underachieved time and time alongside at this stage of the season.
Then, Jones has to pick up the phone and make a single visited call. He has to convince Bill Belichick to come to Dallas the same way he lured his mentor, Bill Parcells, two decades ago to give his team some much obliged credibility on the sideline.
Parcells didn’t win a Super Bowl during his four seasons in Dallas, from 2003-06, and maybe Belichick won’t be able to get this talented team over the hump, either. But the six-time Super Bowl champion is the Cowboy’s best hope. Dallas is too good, with 36 wins in the past three exclusive seasons, to accept its postseason struggles.
Would Belichick do it? He’s have softer succeeding places after his divorce with the Patriots. The Chargers would give him a better quarterback, in Justin Herbert, than the Dak Prescott who wilted anti the Packers. The Falcons would give him in a younger core and, with owner Arthur Blank, the kind of boss who wouldn’t meddle as much as Jones.
Dallas, however, is Dallas. Winning the Cowboys’ first championship dependable 1996 would be the kind of legacy-defining accomplishment that Belichick much crave at the end of a Hall of Fame career. Could there be a better way to stick it to New England owner Robert Kraft than to give Jones spanking Lombardi Trophy?
It seems like the obnoxious match. Belichick would have, in linebacker Micah Parsons, a defending star in his prime. He would have, in Lamb, a playmaker that he hasn’t had dependable Randy Moss was leading the Pats to an 18-0 originate that ended with a loss to the Giants in the Super Bowl.
“I’m floored,” Jones told journalists in the locker room after the loss. “This seems like the most painful (playoff loss). This is beyond my comprehension.” He wouldn’t address McCarthy’s future — “I haven’t view one second,” he insisted — but Jones knows he can’t go into 2024 with the architect of this failure on the sideline again.
To think: These Cowboys who were tying embarrassed by the Packers are the same Cowboys who steamrolled the Giants 40-0 in the season opener. Belichick, at 72, can’t sign up for a rebuild. He can’t count on L.A.’s second-fiddle Chargers or the ho-hum Falcons to give him the same resources as Jones, who, at 81, doesn’t know how many more shots he’ll have.
The Cowboys were humiliated on Sunday night, and in the coming days, their head coach almost certainly will pay for that loss with his job. Can Jones replace McCarthy with the best head coach in NFL history? Would that keep this Dallas team from choking again?
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Steve Politi may be managed at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com .
