Decoding McCarthy, Wildcard - Slow Start Death

Cowboys season ends early because their entire team – led by their QB – started slow.

There are so many ways to evaluate the Dallas Cowboys' offense in 2023, and most of them will be returned from the process as "excellent" and "positive" because for most of the year, they were excellent and positive to the success of the team.

We stated that the offense was improved, and the QB played the best season of his career.

And nobody cares.

That is why, in the aftermath of this most disappointing result that stopped any dreams for this postseason dead in their tracks (before they even really got to the good parts), nobody wants to hear about season numbers. Nobody wants to hear about personal stats, team season numbers, and even All-Pro recognition.

Essentially, nobody wants to even entertain the evidence of the "total body of work" because why do we play these sports? Why do we go through the year cycle of a season?

"The regular season is where you make your money. The playoffs are where you make your legacy."

I swear we have spent years talking about Tony Romo and Dak Prescott and why they don't play their best in the postseason. I will leave Romo to the side in this discussion because I am not here to muddy those waters. But, there were two major issues with his body of work. One, that he and his teams didn't make the playoffs in consecutive years after 2006-2007 and, two, when he got those three brief chances in the divisional rounds, easily his best performance was his 2014 at Lambeau (The Dez catch game) where the Cowboys only had him throw 19 passes for less than 200 yards. The other two chances were bad all around, and the team was dismissed all three times.

Romo usually looked like Romo in the postseason, but by 2009 his playoff runs should have just been getting started. Instead, once he hit his 30th birthday, he would only get one more playoff chance in his entire career, despite playing seven more seasons.

But, we aren't here to talk about Tony Romo.

We are here to talk about Dak Prescott.

Again, on Sunday, with the season hanging in the balance (as well as the decision to cement his spot as this team's QB1 until 2028 or so), Dak and his offense started painfully slow.

In a game where one team started fast and scored 27 points in the first 28 minutes, the home team had managed zero.

Once you are down 27-0, we get a pretty distinct feeling that the rest is going to be against prevent defenses and offer some very nice stat-padding.