Morning After Wk 10 -'24 is Cowboys Worst
Those of us who had major concerns about the path of this season had no idea how bad it could get by early November. Now we know.
For years, a large part of this fanbase has struggled with perspective when it comes to being bad. Take, for example, the stretch from 2011-2013, when the Cowboys finished 8-8 three years in a row, and, incredibly, played the final game of each season with a chance to make the playoffs—only to lose each time. To make it even more entertaining, as if scripted, they rotated rivals to take turns. In 2011, it was the Giants; in 2012, Washington; and in 2013, the Eagles.
Win just one of those three games, and they would have made the playoffs as a 9-7 team—good enough for playoff football, but certainly not a contender for a major prize.
Each year, they lost that game and finished 8-8. The result: a 24-24 record that made everyone feel like the Cowboys were embarrassing and humiliating the region. People wanted the coach, quarterback, owner, and famous players to be sent far, far away.
I remember thinking, most of these people don’t really know what bad football actually is. Cowboys fans have a warped perspective induced by historical dominance. Bad football? To them, it just means missing the playoffs.
But there are actually depths of bad football that many franchises know all too well—depths far below mediocrity.
Bad football is so bad that an 8-8 season feels like a good year. You would dream of 8-8 because your team barely manages 5-11—and not just for one isolated year, but for entire decades. For those who don’t truly understand bad and incompetent football, there are places where a 6-10 decade is the norm (my childhood can verify).
But what we’re looking at now—the 2024 Dallas Cowboys—feels ominous in so many awful ways that it’s hard to capture it accurately. Worse still, we wonder how long this journey might take to return to a familiar place of playoff contention.
Yesterday, astonishingly in front of another full stadium, they sank even further. They allowed their biggest rival to spend the weekend in town, pound the home team into utter submission, never break a sweat or look the least bit challenged, play the JV team late in the game, and fly away laughing.