Are the Dallas Cowboys America’s team? That label is constantly questioned by Dallas Cowboy haters across the league every year that goes by without a Cowboys championship. Despite the Cowboys struggles, despite the Super Bowl drought, the Dallas Cowboys still remain America’s Team. They draw the biggest crowds, demand the highest ticket prices, and appear in more prime time games than any other team. Unfortunately, they fail to live up to lofty expectations more than any other team as well. Now that the Dallas Cowboys (America’s Team) is once again failing to deliver on championship aspirations, heads are going to roll and the majority of the blame has fallen on one man, Jason Garrett.
Not to say that the criticism of Garrett isn’t warranted. He is the only coach tenured as long as he has been that has never won a Super Bowl, let alone appeared in a conference Championship game. Surely, it is time for him to go at the end of the season barring a miracle run to the Super Bowl, but will that solve all of the problems for the Dallas Cowboys, America’s Team?
I have wanted the Dallas Cowboys to move on from Jason Garrett for years now but as time goes by, I am less and less confident that firing him will achieve any better results. If it was that simple, then shame on Jerry Jones for hanging on to him for so long. Jerry can criticise coaching, as he has done this season, but it is not lost on most Cowboys fans that he is the one that personally hired all of those coaches. Their failures are ultimately his failures too. Much is made about the talent on this team and how well Jerry Jones and company have built the roster, yet all along it was obvious that upgrades at Safety and Defensive Tackle were necessary to get this team to the next level and this season they have failed to address those positions with predictable results. For many fans it is and always has been Jerry Jones that is holding the organisation back but perhaps the problem lies deeper than hiring coaches and accumulating talent.
Why are the Dallas Cowboys America’s Team despite their lack of recent achievements on the field? It is not the legacy of the 70’s and 90’s, a large portion of current Cowboy fans are not old enough to even remember those teams. The Dallas Cowboys are America’s team because Jerry Jones has grown the brand into the most iconic in all of professional sports. Jerry Jones has built a stadium referred to as “the palace in Dallas”. He has built a state of the art practice facility and hotel complex. His players train in the fair weather of California instead of the dead heat of Texas. They practice indoors instead of being exposed to the elements. The players are treated like movie stars everywhere they go. They participate in meet and greets, autograph sessions, and photo ops prior to home and away games to accommodate their millions of worshipping fans that follow them everywhere around the country. They walk onto the playing field on a red carpet surrounded by adoring fans instead of bursting through a dark tunnel and into a roaring stadium. Everything the organisation does caters to providing fans the ultimate experience, except for the whole winning championships thing. The fans don’t seem to mind either, they put up with the poor performance on the field and continue to keep pumping money into a bottomless pit of agony and despair.
While the Dallas Cowboys and their fans are having a good time, other teams seem to be concerned with football. Opposing teams look at the Cowboys and see a huge target on their backs. They see a team that is over hyped despite not winning anything in the last 25 years. They see a team that gets all the spotlight, all the prime time games, all the fan fair and all the glamour of being America’s Team. They see a team with a 6-6 record who has been favored in all but one game this season and somehow, someway, are favorites again going into Chicago this Thursday. Those teams show up to play against the Dallas Cowboys. Teams like the Buffalo Bills who play tough hard nosed football and they march into Dallas on a mission. A Bills team full of players that never would have chosen to play football in Buffalo, NY. A team full of cast offs like former Cowboy Cole Beasley who was replaced or “upgraded” with Randall Cobb. A team full of players that have a chip on their shoulder instead of a silver spoon in their mouths like the Cowboys players. Then after physically dominating the Cowboys on Thanksgiving day, the Bills mock the Cowboys most beloved star players like Ezekiel Elliott and Dak Prescott, and they mock the Cowboys fans because they are 9-3, playing great football, and everybody is still talking about the Dallas Cowboys.
Everywhere else in America NFL teams employ football players, but here in Dallas they employ rock stars. That is the disadvantage of playing football in Dallas. That is the reason why Jerry Jones is truly to blame for the Dallas Cowboys lack of success. It is not because of Jason Garrett. It is not because Dak Prescott is not a franchise quarterback. It is not because the defense is not performing up to their perceived standard. It is because the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team and that is why the team continues to underachieve. Too many distractions, too much noise, too little substance. Next season, a new head coach in Dallas is imminent, but unless that new coach brings about a culture change that focuses more on football than fanfare, than his fate will be the same as Jason Garrett’s.
*Photo by Kieth Allison https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode
First Whitten and Lee should not be starters they should be player coaches to help the younger players develop. Donavan Wilson should be given a a chance at starting. The defense coach should be fired and defense set should be changed. Also tell the defensive ends their primary job is not to let the quarter back get on their outside