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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