What Cowboys, Rams, Dolphins and Browns should care about after wild-card losses

Cowboys: A change in leadership is needed

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The Cowboys certainly had to be close to the point of madness after nearly identical season-ending losses to the San Francisco 49ers over the previous two years.

Well, fear not, Dallas faithful. You won’t have to suffer through that duplicate conclusion for a third year in a row. You’re not going to make it that far. Even in a hypothetical world where they were good enough to slay the dragon and beat the 49ers — they weren’t — we’ll never know because they turned in an all-time humiliating performance against the Packers in the wild-card round. Owner Jerry Jones echoed that exact sentiment of embarrassment in his postgame media scrum.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter said his sources indicated that Mike McCarthy was always going to be judged by how the last game for the Cowboys played out. That rings pretty ominous on Monday morning.

In some ways, it’s rough timing to consider parting ways with the offensive play-calling head coach. Quarterback Dak Prescott is coming off his best season in years, leading the NFL in completions and touchdown passes. The aerial attack was the team’s engine as the defense suffered through fits and starts and the running game with Tony Pollard as the bell-cow back was a failure. CeeDee Lamb graduated to not just the elite tier of wide receivers in the league but perhaps into the top three of the position. Ancillary players like Brandin Cooks and Jake Ferguson filled their roles beautifully. Prescott became enthralled with and fully bought into the West Coast offense under McCarthy. This should be an ecosystem worth building, not one we’re considering for a teardown.

However, if you take a talented team and show up wildly unprepared in Round 1 of the playoffs, you must go. Them’s the breaks.

The Packers weren’t doing anything new on offense and yet they shredded Dan Quinn —…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/what-cowboys-rams-dolphins-and-browns-should-care-about-after-wild-card-losses-203108643.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-01-15 20:31:08

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.