The Dallas Cowboys are not a good football team. Their 2024 season is over, and has been for several weeks. Entering Week 11, they had less than a three percent chance of making the playoffs, and after losing to the Houston Texans, 34-10, that now sits at less than one percent. With no healthy pass rushers the majority of the season, one healthy corner the majority of the season, an offensive line in disarray and now no franchise quarterback, the season is a wash.
The problem is, the coaching staff isn’t going to be around next year, so they have no real vested interest in making decisions that benefit the franchise in the long run. That was evident in the fact that head coach Mike McCarthy had Cooper Rush throwing the ball 55 times last night, while Trey Lance sat on the bench getting zero snaps.
The Cowboys’ offense was on the field for 83 snaps. Lance was literally the only active Cowboys player not to see the field on Monday night. 47 of 48 players all saw at least three snaps and 46 of them at least seven.
After the game, McCarthy paid lip service to the “mistake”, saying that’s the one thing he’d second guess himself on.
“I think the one thing I should have done at the end, and I just didn’t do, was put Trey in there. I could’ve gotten him a series. That’s one thing that I would second-guess myself on,” McCarthy said. “I didn’t want to get into putting him in for a play or two, because he’s more than a gadget player in my opinion. We had him prepared to take a series, and frankly there at the end I should’ve gave him that series, and I regret not doing that.” – via ProFootballTalk
Really?
McCarthy wants fans to believe he simply couldn’t figure out how to send Lance onto the field on any of the Cowboys’ final five drives? No. This was a message to owner and GM Jerry Jones that he gets what he asked for in the way the front office approached this season.
The Texans took a 17-point lead with seven minutes remaining in the third quarter. The Dallas offense took 38 snaps from that point forward, and a lifelong coach simply couldn’t figure out that Lance should see the field?
Sorry, not buying it. There’s not much McCarthy can do to show defiance against the machine that will put him out to pasture come January, if not sooner.
Not playing Lance in Week 11 was absolutely one of them.