When you get bounced by double digits to the last seeded team at home, no, you weren't sniffing.
It's actually quite bizarre how so many Cowboys fans continually lower the bar of what constitutes success for these guys.
The back-to-back-to-back 12-5 seasons are overlaid by a thin veil of regression. The team finished 6-10 in 2020.
They bounced back to 12-5 in 2021, gained homefield advantage for the wild card round then lost by six to the 49ers.
That was improvement.
2022 saw the team not secure homefield advantage for the wild card round, beat a fourth seeded sub-.500 Buccaneers, followed by repeat six point loss to the 49ers on the road.
That was not improvement. The overall season's results were a wash at best.
Last season witnessed the team get homefield advantage for the wild card round and promptly lose to the seventh seeded Packers, a game that was 41-16 at the end of the third quarter and finished 48-32. In other words, a blowout postseason loss.
That was clear regression.
Any regular season gloss has been dulled by postseason smearing following the past two 12-5 regular seasons. However, the same downward trend establishes the benchmark illustrating true improvement over the past three seasons.
The team must make the NFC championship round this season. A good showing in another NFC divisional round loss is not improvement even if the regular season record end in 12-5, 13-4 or even better.
A
better regular season record is not the ultimate goal of any NFL franchise. Or at least it should not be. Championships are what every team strives for. Only one team wins it all each year.
However, all teams that cannot advance further into the postseason than they might have done the previous season or seasons has not gotten better. They have slid.
Whether all offseason moves in coaching, free agency and the draft will stop this current two-year slide is the only question facing the 2024 Dallas Cowboys. Reversal of the slide means reaching their benchmark.
