Inside The Star
Saturday’s playoff game officially crowned the NFC’s worst franchise. Say hello to your Dallas Cowboys.
In a cruel twist of fate, the Washington Commanders are the reason why this is so.
Enjoy sprinkling that on your Wheaties this morning everyone.
The Commanders advanced to the NFC Championship game with a shocking upset win over Detroit. It’s the first time Washington will play for the title since 1991.
That makes the Cowboys the only team in the NFC not to have played in a conference championship game in the 21st Century.
It’s been 29 years since Dallas made it that deep into the playoffs. The next closest are the Chicago Bears, who played in the 2010 game.
That’s about half the number of seasons that the Cowboys’ drought has lasted.
There is some good news though.
Cleveland (1989) and Miami (1992) have longer droughts. The Texans have yet to make it, but they’ve only been around since 2002.
At least the Cowboys aren’t the worst franchise in the NFL in terms of recent post-season success.
Not yet anyway.
We’ve talked about it ad nauseam here, and it’s been pointed out by many others elsewhere.
The common denominator for nearly three decades of postseason failure is the franchise’s general manager.
Jerry Jones has often laid claim to being the only person on the planet who could be the general manager of the Dallas Cowboys.
He usually points out the team’s overall record in the regular season over the same time period as a measure of his success.
He has a point there. But the main goal is to win a Super Bowl.
He has no leg to stand on there.
Part of it has been his decisions involving player personnel. For every draft pick he gets right, he misses on at least three others.
A prime example is the 2016 draft when he passed on both Jalen Ramsey and Derrick Henry.
There are many more examples like that too.
His trading record isn’t much better.
He’s overpaid and undersold players and kept players that never paid off. Sending Amari Cooper packing while keeping Michael Gallup is the most recent example.
For that reason alone, any other general manager would have been sent packing years ago.
Especially with the dismal postseason record Dallas has put up in the last 29 seasons.
Then there is his record with coaching hires. Seeing how he is about to hire a new head coach, this might be the greater concern.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who the Cowboys draft, trade for, or sign in free agency, if the head coach is lacking, it won’t change things.
The last coaching hire Jones got right was Jimmy Johnson. Even Barry Switzer couldn’t completely screw up with the team Johnson left him.
But since then, the Cowboys’ head coaches haven’t gotten the job done.
And that’s 100% on Jones.
What makes it worse is that he has had two coaches on his staff...
