Category: 2023 Playoffs

Cowboys stars CeeDee Lamb, Bryan Anger give NFC early lead before Pro Bowl Games’ final day

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys receiver and punter helped win their respective skills events, with several others slated to compete Sunday.

The NFC will carry a 12-6 lead into the final day of the Pro Bowl Games in Orlando, thanks in large part to the individual efforts of several of the Cowboys’ all-stars.

Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and punter Bryan Anger sealed wins in their respective events Thursday, each earning three points for the conference as they head into the remaining skills competitions and the flag football finale on Sunday. Linebacker/edge rusher Micah Parsons and cornerback DaRon Bland also participated in events but were unable to come away with wins.

But several more Cowboys will still get a chance to extend the NFC’s lead. Kicker Brandon Aubrey will line up against Ravens veteran Justin Tucker in a game of Kick Tac Toe, while defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence and offensive guard Tyler Smith will help battle the AFC’s top linemen in Move the Chains.

Lawrence will come back to take a leg in the Gridiron Gauntlet relay race, Parsons will get a shot at redemption in Madden NFL Head-to-Head, and three Cowboys- Anger, Aubrey, and Smith- will compete in a high-stakes Tug-of-War.

The conference that wins each event earns three points that count toward their team’s overall score, with points from the flag football game then being added to crown 2024’s ultimate winner.

Here’s a look at how several Cowboys notables have done so far.

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‘I just want to win’: Cowboys’ Micah Parsons addresses playoff loss, positional questions, 2024’s outlook

From @ToddBrock24f7: The outspoken LB finally did speak out about how the Cowboys’ season ended and his own role in a defense that he says got “outschemed.”

Micah Parsons says he was reluctant to show his face in public for a while after the Cowboys’ devastating wild-card round playoff loss to Green Bay. The Dallas linebacker got out of the country with family for a while to purge the 48-32 defeat from his system, but he nevertheless heard some of the chatter that followed about how he didn’t seem to care much when things went off the rails early versus Jordan Love and the Packers.

Speaking Wednesday from Orlando, he answered some of those questions.

Saying he was ready to “speak my piece,” the third-year superstar came right out of the gates on his latest episode of The Edge with Micah Parsons on Bleacher Report by stressing how badly he wanted to win that game and see Dallas advance in the postseason.

“If you think I was okay with that loss or how we lost,” Parsons said, “you’re obviously delusional. Very delusional.”

The 24-year-old called the team’s performance “completely embarrassing and unacceptable,” and tried to explain to fans how it went wrong.

“At the end of the day, we were just outperformed, outschemed, however you want to put it. They had an answer for everything.”

That goes for both defense and offense, but Parsons was quick to throw his support behind embattled Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who simply couldn’t dig his unit out of a deep hole despite having turned in an MVP-caliber year.

“We gave up over 40 points. What do you expect Dak Prescott to be? Do you expect him to be Superman? He cannot win games by himself,” Parsons said. “I do not put that on Dak Prescott.”

The three-time Pro Bowler also addressed buzz over his usage on the field. While technically listed as a linebacker, Parsons has become used more as an edge rusher. And he was extraordinarily effective, tallying a career-best 14 sacks on the season.

But whichever slot Parsons occupies most, when the Cowboys get exposed as they did by Green Bay, the knee-jerk reaction has been to complain that Parsons wasn’t deployed enough at the other position.

Some have even intimated that Parsons himself refuses to line up as a ‘backer because it would reduce his sack totals.

Parsons tried to put that rumor to bed.

“The packages are in for me to go to linebacker. There’s multiple packages, multiple variations. But I can only play what was called,” he explained. “I’ve told multiple players and coaches that I’m very fine playing linebacker- in the playoffs if that’s what you want me to do. I just want to win.”

As for the accusations that recently made the rounds on social media that Parsons doesn’t take his personal preparation seriously enough or selfishly puts his own individual glory above the team’s goals, Parsons subtly clapped back at that, too.

“I’m at full peace. I don’t think I could have done anything more to try to win that game, and that comes from watching film with the other guys in the room,” he said.

“I challenge anyone to actually go look at the game film and say that Micah didn’t play his heart out in that game or what more could I have done?”

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Parsons did not directly address the decision by the team to stand by head coach Mike McCarthy, and he didn’t mention defensive coordinator Dan Quinn by name. Parsons has referred to Quinn as a father figure in the past, but now Quinn is reportedly a strong contender for the head coaching job in Washington.

It could be the beginning of a time of dramatic change for Parsons, the Dallas defense, and the Cowboys locker room as a whole.

That’s what team owner Jerry Jones would have the outside world believe, anyway. And Parsons, for one, is optimistic that Jones’s “all in” comments made this week will hold true… and lead to better results in 2024.

“They’re talking about how we’re going ‘all in’ this year. Man, that’s what I would hope for,” said Parsons. “I hope that we go out and get the players that we’re missing, because we didn’t do that this year. I hope that we challenge ourselves to become better, become greater. For us.”

And maybe as the calendar once again turns to February twelve months from now, Parsons will be preparing-with his team- to play for a world championship instead of the all-star celebrity gala that’s staged the week before.

“This is not where I want to be sitting right now,” Parsons admitted, “telling you about what we’re doing at the Pro Bowl.”

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Stephen Jones points to Brady, Mahomes in explaining Cowboys’ postseason woes under Prescott

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys COO admits he understands fans’ frustration with recent playoff losses, claiming it will be there until the wins start coming.

The Cowboys’ epic flop in the wild-card round of the playoffs was a total-team meltdown, but when the team’s fans look back on the 16-point home loss to a No. 7-seed, one that prematurely snuffed out a third straight 12-win season, many of them lay the lion’s share of the blame squarely on the $40 million man under center.

Now it seems the Cowboys front office is also looking at quarterback Dak Prescott and expecting more from him moving forward.

Stephen Jones, the team’s executive vice president, said as much Tuesday in speaking with reporters at the Senior Bowl in Mobile. He compared Prescott to two of the winningest passers this generation of football has seen and pointed out all too clearly how Dak has come up short.

When asked about the widespread frustrations following yet another early exit from the postseason, Jones subtly alluded to head coach Mike McCarthy’s call for fans to “buy into us” by admitting that the heavy criticism surrounding the team- which has not advanced past the NFC’s divisional round since the 1995 season- is completely warranted.

“We have had three good years of 12-5 and we have had major disappointments in the postseasons,” Jones said. “So until we do something about it, which is go have another great year and have success in the playoffs, then that’s going to be there. There’s no way they’re going to explicitly trust you until you get it done. Would someone trust Tom Brady and the Patriots that they’re going to get it done? Yeah. Why? Because they did it year in and year out. Does someone trust [Patrick] Mahomes and Kansas City that they’re going to do it? Why? Because they do it six years in a row; they’re in the championship game. Until we compete at that level and we get the job done, then there’s going to be doubt. And rightfully so.”

Jones didn’t talk about defense. He didn’t pin it on coaching. Or the lack of a run game. Or scheme. Or penalties. Or injuries.

He referenced quarterbacks.

Prescott, for all his doubters who can easily point to mostly-poor playoff performances and mistakes made over a 2-5 postseason career, actually had a remarkable regular season, leading the NFL in completions and touchdown throws and finishing in the top three in both completion percentage and passing yards. Those stats have made him a finalist for the league’s MVP and Offensive Player of the Year awards.

But with a mind-boggling cap hit of $59 million-plus coming in 2024, many are now openly questioning if the veteran’s price tag is worth it when it’s Super Bowls that matter.

He obviously has fallen well short of Mahomes’s 14-3 playoff record and two Super Bowl rings (so far). And he’ll never come close to Brady’s 35-13 postseason mark and seven Super Bowl titles.

Even within the history of his own franchise, Prescott’s tenure with the Cowboys currently puts him in the same category as Tony Romo and Danny White, not Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach. So holding him and this squad to the same standard as Brady’s Patriots or Mahomes’s Chiefs only demonstrates just how far off Prescott and the Cowboys are from that trajectory.

Let’s face it: would beating Green Bay in the wild-card matchup have erased the skepticism that Prescott and the Jones-led Cowboys have engendered?

Prescott played brilliantly in last year’s opening-round win (over Brady and the Buccaneers, no less); that bought him exactly six days’ worth of grace, until he and the ‘Boys laid an egg the next week in San Francisco.

What if Dallas had even made it past the divisional round this year, only to lose to the 49ers in the NFC championship? Wouldn’t we still be having the exact same discussion?

Jones is talking about consistent, repeated success in January, something that will take years to build before it’s considered real.

But it starts with one. And for Prescott and the Cowboys, it can only start with the next one.

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Whether Jones and the Cowboys brain trust have already decided they’ll pursue signing Prescott to an extension, restructure his deal to soften the financial blow, start looking (perhaps in Mobile at the Senior Bowl) for a successor, or even do the unthinkable, the COO gave an unsurprisingly vague answer.

“We love our quarterback,” Jones said with a smile. “It’s well-documented what we think of our quarterback.”

But then Jerry Jones also said, “I think I’ve said that we will go as far as Dak takes us in the playoffs. Remember that. We will go as far as Dak takes us. And that is how far we went.”

Whatever they think of the Joneses, whatever they think of Prescott, Cowboys fans can- and certainly will- read into that whatever they want to hear.

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Cowboys add 3 players to NFC’s Pro Bowl Games roster

From @ToddBrock24f7: DeMarcus Lawrence, Jake Ferguson, and Tyler Smith will participate in this year’s all-star festivities; the Cowboys had 10 players named.

The Cowboys may not be participating in the big game they were aiming for in Las Vegas, but a significant handful of Dallas players will still get the chance to shine on an individual level this weekend in Orlando.

And that number just increased.

Seven Cowboys were initially selected to the Pro Bowl Games, but three more of their teammates will now be attending as well. Defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, tight end Jake Ferguson, and left guard Tyler Smith have been added to the NFC’s all-star roster.

Lawrence will replace Nick Bosa, and Ferguson will take George Kittle’s spot as those 49ers players prepare to play in Super Bowl LVIII. Smith will fill in for Cowboys guard Zack Martin, who has elected not to participate for personal reasons.

That brings the count of Cowboys named to the Pro Bowl Games to 10, with nine of them expected to compete in several days’ worth of skills competitions and games leading up to the interconference flag football match to be played on Feb. 4.

This will be Lawrence’s fourth time as a Pro Bowler, the first for Ferguson and Smith.

They will join Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, edge rusher/linebacker Micah Parsons, cornerback DaRon Bland, kicker Brandon Aubrey, and punter Bryan Anger.

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Several with Cowboys connections to vie for Super Bowl LVIII as 49ers, Chiefs

From @ToddBrock24f7: A pass rusher, a tight end, and an assistant coach are among those with ties to America’s Team as they prepare for a world championship.

Super Bowl LVIII’s matchup gives Cowboys fans a difficult decision on who to root for. While many may feel oversaturated with talk of a Chiefs dynasty and perhaps a little weary of the Mahomes/Reid/Kelce/Swift Extravaganza, no one in Cowboys Nation is particularly eager to see the 49ers move past Dallas by winning a sixth Lombardi Trophy.

But while the teams taking playing in Las Vegas on Feb. 11 may not spur much enthusiasm from the Cowboys faithful, there will be a few individuals on the field with connections to the star.

Here’s a quick look at a few of the names that may be familiar to Cowboys fans when this year’s big game kicks off.

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What went wrong in Cowboys’ wild card loss to the Packers

The Dallas Cowboys fell victim to their own history in their embarrassing wild card loss to the Green Bay Packers. | From @BenGrimaldi

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, the Dallas Cowboys came up short in the playoffs. And not just a little short either, this wasn’t losing by a few inches, this was all the way short.

As good as Mike McCarthy’s team was in 2023, and as much fun as the regular season was, it all went wrong in their wild card loss to the Green Bay Packers. If you’re counting – who are we kidding, everyone is – that’s 28 straight years without an NFC championship appearance for a franchise that prides itself on Super Bowl success. That’s where the Cowboys are now, the bar has been lowered from 28 years removed from the Super Bowl to 28 years since making an NFC title game.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. For the third consecutive season, the Cowboys got embarrassed in the postseason, leaving questions to where Jerry Jones goes from here. At 81-years old, time isn’t on Jones’ side to win another Super Bowl, which means he needs to make some quick decisions.

First, Jones needs answers. He needs to find out what went wrong with his Cowboys in the wild card loss to the Packers.

3 Major takeaways from Cowboys season coming to an abrupt end

How does a shocking elimination loss to the Packers impact the major takeaways for the Cowboys? | From @cdpiglet

The 2023 regular season set up perfectly for the Dallas Cowboys. They tied for the best record in the NFC at 12-5. They had nine All-Pro players, including their MVP-caliber quarterback Dak Prescott. Their playoff matchup seemed an ideal outcome, with the inexperienced Green Bay Packers coming to AT&T Stadium, where Dallas hadn’t been defeated all season.

Things didn’t go as planned. The Packers shocked Dallas by beating them down so bad it wasn’t a competitive second half where a 48-32 final score was hardly indicative of the true nature of the game. The score was 27-0 before the Cowboys ever showed a pulse. Dallas was the only home city to have their lights turned off for them in the wild-card round.

Now that the season has ended, the team can look back at what went right, what went wrong, and what it means for the future. Dan Quinn, Mike McCarthy, and even Prescott have question marks for their futures in Dallas. The major takeaways from this game include looking at the defense, the offense, and the championship window of the Cowboys going into next season.

‘You start now’: Cowboys TE Jake Ferguson ready to use brutal loss as fuel

From @ToddBrock24f7: The 2nd-year TE was a rare bright spot on Sunday, turning in career-best numbers. But he’s ready to start the grind toward the ’24 playoffs.

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.”

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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Cowboys CB Stephon Gilmore to have shoulder surgery before free agency

From @ToddBrock24f7: The veteran was set to wear a shoulder harness for the duration of the Cowboys’ playoff run. He’ll have his torn labrum repaired this week.

Cowboys cornerback Stephon Gilmore was an immediate difference-maker in his first year with the Cowboys, becoming one of the leaders on defense after Trevon Diggs was lost to an early-season ACL injury.

Now a late-season injury of his own will send him to the operating room as he wonders if he’ll be wearing the star again in 2024.

Gilmore is set to undergo surgery for a torn labrum that he suffered in the regular-season finale versus Washington, according to a report from Michael Gehlken of the Dallas Morning News. The 12-year veteran wore a shoulder harness in Sunday’s wild-card loss to Green Bay and played every one of the team’s defensive snaps. He was prepared to wear the harness for the duration of the Cowboys’ postseason run, delaying surgery until the offseason.

But now the offseason is here. Surgery is expected to come this week.

“I tried to give it all I’ve got,” Gilmore, 33, said after the playoff defeat. “I still felt like I could play. Tried to give it a go. Got to take advantage of these opportunities.”

What opportunity might come next for Gilmore is very much up in the air.

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A former top-ten draft pick of Buffalo in 2012, Gilmore was traded to Dallas by the Colts last spring exchange for a fifth-round 2023 pick. He is set to become a free agent in March.

Fellow Cowboys cornerback Jourdan Lewis is also scheduled to hit free agency this offseason, while Diggs and second-year man DaRon Bland are set to return to the club.

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‘I sucked tonight’: Cowboys’ Dak Prescott stands by HC Mike McCarthy after epic playoff collapse

If Mike McCarthy’s job is in jeopardy after Sunday’s loss, Prescott says his should be, too. That’s unlikely as a rocky offseason begins.

It took Dak Prescott just nine seconds into his Sunday evening press conference to find the word that Cowboys fans had been feeling all afternoon.

“Just shocked, honestly,” he told reporters as he tried to explain the opening-round postseason loss to the Green Bay Packers that was far more humiliating than the 48-32 score alone would suggest.

Shocked. Yep.

The 12-5 Cowboys had, shockingly, just been wiped off the field- their own field- and prematurely sent into the offseason by the lowest-ranked playoff seed in the conference. And following an outing in which Dallas had no answers in any phase of the game, the leader of the offense was just as lost for suggestions on what needs to happen next to get this regular-season powerhouse over the hump into actual contention for a title.

“I wish I had that answer for you, honestly.”

A growing number of outside observers have plenty of ideas, though, and many of them start with making a change at head coach.

Prescott, for one, isn’t ready to give up on Mike McCarthy. In fact, he doubled down on what the 60-year-old in his fourth year with the club has meant, to the organization and to him personally.

“He’s been amazing,” Prescott said when asked about this latest postseason collapse putting McCarthy’s job in jeopardy. “I don’t know how that can be, but I understand the business. In that case, it should be about me as well, honestly. That guy, I’ve had the season that I’ve had because of him. This team has had the success that they’ve had because of him. I understand it’s about winning the Super Bowl. That’s the standard of the league and damn sure the standard of this place, so I get it. But add me to the list, in that case.”

The dollars and cents, though, would seem to put Prescott and McCarthy in different categories as far as guarantees of their future employment in Dallas goes.

The head coach is now entering the final year of his contract, in a league where lame-duck head coaches are exceedingly rare; common sense says owner Jerry Jones will either- this offseason- extend McCarthy or buy out his final year and move on.

Prescott has a budget-crippling $59-plus million dollars coming his way in 2024 salary cap numbers, a no-trade clause in his deal, and language preventing the team from using the franchise tag on him again. A reworking of his terms is almost certainly coming… unless Jones is embarrassed and devastated enough by Sunday’s total no-show to blow the whole thing up and truly start over.

McCarthy bet on himself for 2023 by firing offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and installing himself as offensive play-caller. When it worked, the Dallas offense was a juggernaut, and the Cowboys led the league in scoring… albeit mostly against bad teams.

But there were several games- including, inexplicably, their playoff bout against his old club- in which his Cowboys looked completely uninspired and wholly unprepared.

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Prescott led the NFL in interceptions a year ago and vowed to turn that around. He did, throwing more touchdowns than anyone this season, earning his first All-Pro bid (second team), and being a legitimate contender for the league MVP award.

But the eight-year veteran said that the team’s wild-card train wreck renders all those accomplishments meaningless.

“A thousand percent,” he explained from the podium. “I’m not a guy that lives in the past, so where my feet are and at this moment? Yeah, I sucked tonight. And that was it.”

For a leader who has been so consistently good during the regular season, Prescott was unable to provide insight on why it never- apart from last year’s opening-round postseason win over 8-9 Tampa Bay- seems to translate to the playoffs, for him or for the Cowboys as a unit.

“It’s tough to give you that answer when I just went out there and we just did that. Unfortunately, that’s what the offseason’s for. And it’s a long, long one.”

But this offseason in Dallas is also going to be a rocky, rocky one.

And maybe that’s not so much of a shock.

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