In my opinion as a non-Cowboys fan, this isn’t that bad of an offseason, and not close to the worst you’ve had. What’s happens this year is you’re having to own up to a lot of bad contracts you’ve been giving out lately: Amari lost for a 5th rounder, Jaylon is STILL on the books for 6m$, La’El you took a huge dead cap hit in cutting (that will carry over to next year), Zeke you’re just waiting to cut when you can (as proof by him not getting restructures even though they’d save you a lot of space). I think a lot of people knew this was coming. Maybe you could still be more active in FA with the cap you have, but that’s just not the Jones’s way. Like it or not, it’s just what it is.
That’s not what happened in 2010 though. Does anyone remember this offseason? You just came back on the Eagles after it was almost assured we had the division. Philly went into week 17 at 11-4, looking to end 12-4 and have the 1 or 2 seed and a bye. Instead, you got us in the final game, we both ended at 11-5 and you had the tie breaker. The very next week was in Dallas for round 1 and you blew us out to go to Minnesota to face off against Favre’s big year there.
Even though you lost that game, Dallas’s hype was never higher than it was that offseason, not even after 2007. Everyone thought you were going to run roughshod through the NFC and go to the Super Bowl, especially if Favre didn’t come back. “You would have beaten the SB champion Saints in the NFCCG,” was the common narrative, as you did just that in the regular season about 2 months prior.
This unearned prestige began to fester, I genuinely believe it infected the mindset of the team. Jerry was all over the papers, convincing his players their poop don’t stink, and Stephen was touting Dez Bryant as the next great Michael Irvin incarnation which was all the team needed to replace TO. You proceeded to open 1-4 before Romo was lost for the season, and then the Garrett era started after 3 more losses in a row. Jerry thought if he convinced you that you were already champions then you’d show the world that his words burned a fire in the players’ souls, but just the opposite happened.
That is the worst possible offseason. This is nothing compared to the Psychological “experiment” conducted that year.