Tag: 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.

[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal]

‘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?”

[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal]

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.”

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

[mm-video type=video id=01hn9jn4axy4wys63xcb playlist_id=01eqbwens7sctqdrqg player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01hn9jn4axy4wys63xcb/01hn9jn4axy4wys63xcb-7537b4c56705b1769f68ef4b83b276e6.jpg]

[lawrence-newsletter]

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.

[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal]

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.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

[mm-video type=video id=01hn961qk6hrm8mawedz playlist_id=01eqbwens7sctqdrqg player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01hn961qk6hrm8mawedz/01hn961qk6hrm8mawedz-f01b4a88cbbbfd29b248b766ab7a5862.jpg]

[lawrence-newsletter]

‘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.

[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal]

“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.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

[mm-video type=video id=01hm6jvmfmf1b0y5jrnd playlist_id=01eqbwens7sctqdrqg player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01hm6jvmfmf1b0y5jrnd/01hm6jvmfmf1b0y5jrnd-bf85bea1bbdb7260b4610befefc3d52b.jpg]

[lawrence-newsletter]

Chiefs will play Bills in divisional round of playoffs on Sunday night

Chiefs will play Bills in divisional round of playoffs on Sunday night

The Kansas City Chiefs will officially be on the road to take on the Buffalo Bills in the AFC’s divisional round of the playoffs, and we now know the game schedule details.

The NFL announced that the Chiefs will face the Bills on Sunday, Jan. 21, at 5:30 p.m. CT. The game will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+. The Detroit Lions will host an NFC divisional round game in the afternoon spot on NBC, Peacock, and Universo at 2:00 p.m. CT.

The Buffalo Bills (2) are hosting for the first time in their postseason rivalry with the Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs. On Monday afternoon, they secured their spot with a resilient victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers at snowy Highmark Stadium. In two previous postseason matchups against the Chiefs, each at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills fought valiantly only to come up short to Kansas City.

In their Week 14 meeting, Penalties and mistakes were the story of the Chiefs’ meltdown at Arrowhead Stadium that led to the controversial offsides call on Kadarius Toney. The offense turned the ball over, including a tipped Mahomes pass leading to an interception, and was ineffective in the red zone late in the game. The Bills’ offense had issues with the Chiefs’ defense but produced in clutch moments to steal a victory in Kansas City.

The Bills are playing the best football of their season heading into the game, while Kansas City’s offense showed positive signs of life in their wild card round victory over the Miami Dolphins.

‘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.

[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal]

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.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

[mm-video type=video id=01hm6jvmfmf1b0y5jrnd playlist_id=01eqbwens7sctqdrqg player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01hm6jvmfmf1b0y5jrnd/01hm6jvmfmf1b0y5jrnd-bf85bea1bbdb7260b4610befefc3d52b.jpg]

[lawrence-newsletter]

Studs and duds from Cowboys’ ugly 48-32 wild card loss to Packers

Mike McCarthy and Dan Quinn were the lead duds in the Cowboys’ embarrassing 48-32 wild card loss to the Green Bay Packers. | From @BenGrilmaldi

The Dallas Cowboys suffered another embarrassing postseason loss, but this one feels like the biggest stunner of them all. The Cowboys exited the playoffs at the hands of the Green Bay Packers, getting manhandled, 48-32, in the wild card round. The Cowboys have now lost their last two playoff games at AT&T Stadium, a mind-numbing stat for a team that had won it’s last 16 games played there.

This has become an annual ritual for Jerry Jones’ franchise; a great regular season only to get boat raced when the games mean the most. That makes 28 years and counting where the Cowboys won’t make it to the NFC championship game, a feat not even the pinnacle of the sport.

In defeat, the Cowboys now have the dubious honor of being the first No. 2 seed to lose to the seventh seed since the new playoff format was adopted. Another postseason, another embarrassing record to add to their embarrassing playoff ledger.  Here are the studs and duds for the Cowboys in their ugly wild card loss.

Twitter reacts to Cowboys crapping the bed, Michael Irvin calls for heads to roll

The Cowboys’ lackluster performance has led to a mixture of frustration and solution suggestions on social media.

The Dallas Cowboys are in offseason mode much quicker than anyone would’ve imagined. The club was in beatdown mode from the opening whistle, and never recovered as the Green Bay Packers walloped them, 48-32.

The game was hardly that close. A third-straight 12-win season led to a third-straight playoff loss to Kyle Shanahan and his expansive coaching tree, this time it was Matt LaFluer and young QB Jordan Love doing the most damage. Dan Quinn’s defense was exposed once again and Mike McCarthy’s offense played tight in another big contest. As such, the Twitter streets erupted with disappointment and frustration.

Why this loss might be it for Mike McCarthy as Cowboys head coach

Our @ReidDHanson checks in with a sobering evaluation of what McCarthy has brought to the table, and whether it’s enough to invite him back for Year 5.

Three consecutive 12-win seasons. That was the reflexive response when the job security of Mike McCarthy was publicly questioned this past week. In today’s up-and-down NFL, the Cowboys have been the epitome of consistency during the McCarthy era. Aside from Dak Prescott’s missing season, the Cowboys have been perennial contenders; Something they hadn’t been since the Super Bowl teams of the 1990s.

Yet McCarthy’s limited postseason success as the Cowboys head coach has kept the topic alive and his seat uncomfortably hot. McCarthy’s Cowboys have now gone 1-3 in postseason games as a 12-win team following Sunday’s 48-32 debacle. They’ve been upset, bullied and embarrassed. Aside from one big win over an 8-9 Buccaneers team in 2022, Dallas has consistently disappointed in the postseason. Hence the hot seat.

Lone Star Stunner: Packers demolish Cowboys, season ends in dud performance

The Cowboys didn’t just lay an egg, it cracked when it hit the ground and got smeared all over the faces of anyone who believed.

The Dallas Cowboys had everything in front of them this postseason, but once again they were unable to get out of their own way. Owning the No. 2 seed as NFC East champions, the club was guaranteed at least two home playoff games at AT&T Stadium, where they had won 16 consecutive contests. All they had to do was dispatch the 9-8 Green Bay Packers, who had to win three straight games to end the year just to qualify for the dance.

They couldn’t.

Neither Dan Quinn’s defense nor Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott’s offense resembled anything they had put forth all season long, and the team got trampled in an embarrassing blowout loss to end their season, 48-32.

The 48 points was the most Dallas has ever given up in a playoff game, and the writing was on the wall from the opening kickoff. The Packers are the first No. 7 seed to win a playoff game ever.

A questionable game plan to move away from man coverage was augmented by badly timed penalties on the opening drive of the defense. Jordan Love marched the Packers down the field, allowing Aaron Jones a short touchdown for the early 7-0 lead.

From there, it was all downhill. A far-too-common deer-in-headlights offense was met by timid playcalling and before anyone knew it, Dak Prescott had thrown his second interception, a Pick-6 that made it 27-0 in the second quarter.

Prescott was objectively horrible in the first half, missing targets and making questionable decisions. By the time they got into any sort of rhythm, the game was on miracle-comeback status.

And that never got off the ground because Dan Quinn’s defense couldn’t stop a sneeze.

Dallas won 12 games for the third consecutive season, a first since the glory days of the 1990s, but after such a demoralizing, lethargic performance, there are going to be major questions about the future of the coaching staff and the direction of the team.