Sunday saw the Dallas Cowboys lose in the most “Cowboys-esque” way possible in their first round matchup with San Francisco. With just 14 seconds left and the Cowboys down 23-17, Dak Prescott ran a quarterback draw up the middle of the field with no timeouts left. The play went for 17 yards, but the Cowboys couldn’t spike the ball before time expired.
NFL rules state that the umpire has to spot the ball before another play can happen – leaving the Cowboys scrambling to get the snap off after the official collided with Prescott in the backfield. Sheer carnage in the most Cowboys way possible.
That may have been the final nail in the coffin for the Cowboys, but it wasn’t the moment that defined their season. Nor was it the real reason they lost. It was the penalties. All 14 of them – tying a franchise record for the most penalties in a postseason game. The Cowboys were reckless, undisciplined, disorganized, and genuinely disappointing. For all the talent on the roster, it felt like they were fighting against themselves for large stretches of the game.
However, that performance, warts and all, weren’t an aberration. It was a classic Cowboys for 2021. No team took more penalties than America’s Team this season: 127 for a total of 1103 yards. The Cowboys struggled to move the ball consistently against the 49ers on Sunday. Prescott completed just 53 percent of his passes, the offense repeatedly failed to convert on third down and the run game was non-existent. This wasn’t the Cowboys’ offense that finished as the number one scoring unit in the NFL in the regular season.
In terms of their offensive personnel, there’s a real chance that we never see it together again. The Cowboys have several roster decisions to make in the offseason and with the team already $13m over the projected cap in 2022, it’s next to impossible that their roster will resemble anything close to this year’s version.
With the likes of Michael Gallup, Dalton Schultz, Randy Gregory, Leighton Vander Esch, and Connor Williams all hitting free agency, the Cowboys must accept the reality that re-signing even half of the aforementioned players is financially implausible. To make matters more complicated, offensive coordinator Kellen Moore will almost certainly be a head coach somewhere else in 2022.
Losing all of that talent, as well as the brain that pieced it together, is alarming and will make their success this year difficult to repeat next season. It’s not to say that the Cowboys aren’t a talented team and won’t still be one of the better offensive units next year, but the roster will be starkly different.
The Cowboys had everything in place to win a Super Bowl this season. A high-powered offense, a stingy defense featuring one of the best young players in the NFL, their ability to force multiple turnovers a game, and a young innovative offensive coordinator on his way to the top. It’s ironic that despite all of that, it was really the Cowboys that got in their own way. They’ll be back in 2022, but their best chance to win a Super Bowl in 29 years may have just passed them by.
-Thomas Valentine
Twitter: @ThomasValenfine