If misery loves company, Dallas is now in the right place. After a tumultuous offseason expectedly led to a horrible start to the regular season, the 2024 season is now over for the Cowboys. Though they will line up on Sunday night to take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Dallas Cowboys no longer have a shot to make the 2024 playoffs.
Thanks to an untimely third-down drop by Eagles wideout DeVonta Smith, the Washington Commanders were able to take advantage of a final possession, marching down the field to score a touchdown with six seconds remaining. Despite five turnovers and knocking Jalen Hurts out the game early, Washington’s 36-33 win over Philadelphia gives them 10 wins on the season.
With only three games remaining, including SNF, and only six wins, it is now impossible for the Cowboys to become the seventh seed in the NFC playoffs. Dan Quinn’s unit had a ton to do with the end of last season for the Cowboys, and now his team has put the nail in the coffin of this season.
There will be plenty of ink spilled over the disaster that started last January with a wild-card blowout loss to Green Bay, saw Jerry Jones bring back a lame-duck coaching staff and a total lack of free agency activity. The Cowboys toyed with extensions with their two biggest offensive stars before caving and allowed a stink to hover over the organization for seemingly no gain aside from collecting interest on the guaranteed money they eventually forked over for Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb’s deal.
Now, the club is behind the eight ball for 2025, with two key defensive stars already knocked out for most if not all of next year in LB DeMarvion Overshown and CB Trevon Diggs.
But for now, the post mortem is going to focus on what has gone wrong in 2024, and that’s one big suitcase to try and unpack. There’s no rush to fix it, because the playoffs are no longer an option.