It’s admittedly too soon for Dallas fans to care much about silver linings from Sunday’s black-cloud disaster of a day in the wild-card round of the playoffs. But tight end Jake Ferguson was one of the few Cowboys who seemed to be up for the moment, even if he was as stunned as everyone else at how the day ended.
“It’s a tough one,” Ferguson told reporters at his locker following the 48-32 loss. “I don’t really have any words.”
Ferguson’s ten receptions led the team and represented a new career-high for the second-year man. The tight end, who will turn 25 on Thursday, also logged new personal bests with 12 targets, 93 receiving yards, and three touchdowns.
None of it was enough, though, to bring the Cowboys’ high-octane offense to life in time to make a difference.
“This is the NFL,” Ferguson explained. “This is playoff football. You’ve got to have more than one spark. You’ve got to keep playing. You’ve got to play continuously good football.”
Not sure how Dak completed this to Jake Ferguson pic.twitter.com/SAy8PmaaHJ
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) January 14, 2024
Most of Ferguson’s teammates, though, did not play continuously good football on Sunday, and just like that, another months-long grind and promising 12-win season has ended with disappointed players quietly cleaning out their lockers while other squads move on.
“This work’s been going since last year,” Ferguson said. “And I think we’ve just got to learn from it.”
And although Dallas’s latest postseason loss will sting for a while, Ferguson has already turned the page.
“For starters, you get your ass in the weight room. You get your ass on the playbook. You start now. The offseason starts now. The preparation for next year starts now,” he promised.
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“So whatever I look back [on] and say, ‘Hey, Ferg, I was off on this or I was off on that or I need to be better in the run game or blocking or whatever it may be,’ that starts now for me.”
Given his marked improvement over an already-impressive rookie season, the idea that Ferguson is still on an upward trajectory is a glimmer of hope in the otherwise gloomy skies over Cowboys Nation today.
The team may have plenty of other questions as they come to grips with the fact that their 2023 campaign is over sooner than expected, but Jake Ferguson is locked in. And he’s already on to 2024.
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