Blogging The Boys
The Ice Bowl was a long time ago. Not to diminish its significance to the Dallas Cowboys at large, or their relationship with the Green Bay Packers in particular, but when it comes to the former we are reaching a point where we have to look at their history in two halves: B.D. and A.D.
The Drought™ is on the verge of officially reaching the age of 30 this year for the Cowboys. It is for this reason that we must consider life Before Drought and After Drought.
You are painfully familiar with how the Cowboys have not reached even an NFC Championship Game since the 1995 stadium, a contest they won right before they last lifted the Lombardi Trophy at Sun Devil Stadium. From a Cowboys standpoint, it is hard not to look at how the Packers were involved in the title game, a particular point that has evaded Dallas, and feel like the franchises have been cosmically intertwined ever since.
This Sunday night will see the Packers visit AT&T Stadium to play the Cowboys. They will be bringing one of the greatest Cowboys in recent memory, arguably the greatest in Micah Parsons, as he was just traded there a month ago. If you had told us this would happen the last time that Green Bay was in the building, it would have been impossible to fathom. Oh, and the last time they were in the building they delivered the Cowboys one of the more demoralizing losses the franchise has ever seen. In many ways, the Cowboys are still trying to recover from that 2023 Wild Card Round defeat. You can make an argument that it was the most embarrassing Cowboys playoff loss in the Jerry Jones era.
It is difficult to encapsulate the cosmic nature of all things Cowboys and Packers in that particular moment, but it is equally difficult for all points in time that are A.D. That playoff win was Green Bay’s third in Dallas’ home building of AT&T Stadium. That is, of course, how many the Cowboys have themselves since the venue opened in 2009. What’s absurd is that the Packers only have two from beating the Cowboys specifically there, as their other one was the one when they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV (it was Cowboys Stadium at the time for technical purposes).
That Super Bowl win put Mike McCarthy in a type of NFL lore that led to him getting the Cowboys job in the early days of 2020 when the team moved on from Jason Garrett. Consider that Garrett’s greatest moment as a player came against the Packers, by the way, during the 1994 Thanksgiving Day Game.
This is the same McCarthy who correctly challenged Dez Bryant’s catch for the Cowboys in a playoff game between the clubs, when Dallas was led by Garrett, at Lambeau Field, and who won the Divisional Round matchup between the two in Arlington in January of 2017 (also Garrett’s Cowboys).
Dez’s catch. McCarthy’s...
