Dallas Pregame Three Thoughts for Green Bay
The Playoffs are here and the opponent is a familiar foe with an unfamiliar quarterback.
If you want to make a professional athlete feel pain and anguish, let them get within reach of a goal, and then, upon falling short, tell them they have to go all the way back to the start of the journey and begin again.
I remember talking to Jason Witten after the 2014 playoff loss in Green Bay and could not get over how exhausted he was at that truth. They were so close and felt like they had done enough to beat the Packers that day. They did not. And so they had to go all the way back to the start and try to climb again in 2015.
Obviously, there is nothing like that depressing premise. In video games, one of the real advances was when games started to be designed so you could save your progress and not have to restart at the beginning every time you died. Instead, the next time you play, just start in Level 13 and keep going. Well, real life and the NFL don’t work that way. Instead, if you lose in January, you must go back to March and begin the workouts and the mini-camps with the installation of the offense and defense to start all over again.
I tell you this because the Cowboys have finally gotten back to where they left off in 2022. They entered the 2022 playoffs with dreams and optimism, but they were limping in. They shocked many with their demolition in Tampa Bay, but on a short week in Santa Clara, things fell apart against those 49ers.
But Dallas is back here. They are back with better health, better vibes, and a better seeding. They have a path that allows some belief that on January 28th, they could be playing in their first NFC Championship Game since January 14, 1996 – ironically enough, against these Green Bay Packers.
Few teams have crossed paths as often as Green Bay and Dallas. The history oozes, and hopefully, you have a chance to wander through those past meetings because there are some absolute classics. This will be the 9th time they have met in the playoffs, which ties Green Bay with San Francisco (temporarily) for the most common Cowboys playoff opponent of all time.
The playoff series is tied 4-4, with Green Bay winning the first two (both in the calendar year 1967) and the last two, where Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy became unpopular figures in this city in January of 2015 and 2017. Green Bay has two playoff wins at home and two here in North Texas. Dallas won the four in between, in which they handled Lynn Dickey once and Brett Favre three times, all at Texas Stadium between January of 1983 and that aforementioned 1995 NFC Championship Game.
You cannot tell the story of the Cowboys without spending time on the Packers and you cannot tell the story of the Packers without chapters on the Cowboys.
They are essential to each-other’s history and that is why the combinations of the uniforms seem to hit all the right notes in our football consciousness. It is a beautiful series.
They renew their relationship on Sunday at 3:30 in what is to be a frigid Arlington, Texas, but it won’t matter inside AT&T Stadium where it should be about 72 degrees and perfect. It will end someone’s season and send them all the way back to the start.