As you all may have guessed from the last thread I posted last night, I had something I wanted to post last night but was waiting to try to calm down. I'm a little bit calmer now, but I'm still a very angry horse when it comes to Jerry and this team ATM. I apologise that this thread is going to be long, but I just need to say my piece to let it loose. This is more of a vent thread because I'm absolutely furious with Jerry.
I knew this was going to be a painful season. As soon as Jerry said "All-In", it was obvious this season was going to be a bust. I care deeply about this team. I've been a fan since I was 6. I plan to still be a fan for life. I have Cowboys stars on my fursuit, which is no small thing in the furry fandom. The Cowboys are a key part of my fursona. Yet, it's painful for me to see what's happening, and I'm not sure how it gets fixed. I really don't.
Here's the thing, and some of you have seen me post something to this effect before, but I want effort out of this franchise. I'm 31. I was about 3 the last time we won a SB. Sure, other franchises have had it worse. It's amazing to see the turnaround the Lions have had, and I hope that Hutchinson recovers quickly. That being said, this thread is directly about the Cowboys. I can accept a loss from this team. Heck, my first seasons in the fandom were 5-11. I'm used to losing at this point. What I despise is the lack of effort. I can't say I blame the players to an extent, but it angers me. Why do I not blame the players to an extent? This is where my main focus for this thread comes in. The lack of effort from Jerry Jones.
This isn't just something that took place this past offseason. No, this has been years and years of no effort finally building up to where we are now. In the 2018-2019 season, we got massacred by the Rams (QBed by Jared Goff) in the division round. A big reason for this is that we couldn't stop an aging running back. It was a game that, if we could simply stop the run, we probably win. But we let an aging CJ Henderson run roughshod over us. Since then, we have been PATHETIC at stopping the run. You would think in that offseason, especially not having a 1st round pick due to the Cooper trade that Jerry would need to sign someone who can stop the run. So, what were our signings?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dallas_Cowboys_season
WRRandall Cobb29Green Bay Packers1 year, $5 million
TEJason Witten37Did not play1 year, $4.5 million
DEKerry Hyder28Detroit Lions1 year, $1 million
DTChristian Covington26Houston Texans1 year, $2.5 million (305 lbs and not a NT)
Great! That will fix our team! Oh, we didn't make the playoffs the next year and Garrett's deal ran out. Then we got Mike and went 6-10 with an even worse defence. Then we get Quinn at DC and go 12-5 3 years in a row with minimal signings and ways to address the big issue of stopping the run. Fast forward to last year, and we get massacred by the Cardinals. Oh, but they weren't starting Murray. They were starting Dobbs and were supposed to be tanking. Yet, they run James Connor over us. Great. Well, it's one game....then we get run over again by the 49ers because, again, we can neither run the ball nor stop the run. We had done NOTHING to fix our ground game or run stopping. We have showed no effort during the season to fix a glaring weakness. But, that's okay, we have a great team overall. We got Dak playing lights out. What some didn't realise until the Bills game was that he was masking some glaring weaknesses on this team. If a team could run the ball effectively, we couldn't stop it. There's only so much a quarterback can do when you're forced to be one dimensional in the NFL. So, no surprise, we get demolished by the Packers in the playoffs.
So, you would think with such glaring weaknesses that we would want to address the problem. You'd think we'd want to address NT and RB. You know, the two glaring holes. Derrick Henry is available. I'm not saying he would have fixed anything, but it would at least be effort. Especially for an owner who was "All-In". Yet, he goes to the Ravens, we bring back Zeke with no other contingency plan, and do nothing to fix our run defence. Then Jerry gaslights us all offseason with the all in lie, and then gaslights us in his training camp press conference. As if that wasn't bad enough, he has the nerve to gaslight us AGAIN last night by acting so surprised by our getting torched when ANYONE with ANY LEVEL of football IQ could see we had no chance against Detroit with the way Jerry constructed the team.
Football is about effort. You can have the cream of the crop talent, but without effort starting from leadership, you get results like last night. My anger isn't so much at the fact we are a bad team, it's at the fact that it was preventable! Or, if not preventable, at least there could have been a plan forward IF Jerry knew this team wasn't going to compete. Instead, either because of gross incompetence, a lack of caring, a sick thrill of seeing his fans be miserable, or worse, Jerry does the ONE thing that makes no sense. He waits all offseason and then signs Dak and CeeDee before the season starts. There was no plan at all. At one point, I was thinking, okay, maybe we are rebuilding. I like Dak and CeeDee, but I can be onboard with a rebuild if that's needed. Nope, he doesn't do that. Well, maybe we are trying to compete this year. But he didn't sign anybody besides Kendricks who was out yesterday. Our depth is pathetic. We can't run the ball. And the team is constructed about as well as a cardboard box set on fire.
Of course this team was NEVER good enough this season! Of course Dak is struggling! Of course this defence can't compete! The reason this season is lost and was lost in freaking March? Structural failure! That's on Jerry Jones and entirely on him. No coach would be able to succeed with this. Mahomes couldn't lead this team to the playoffs. Why? Because you can't be one dimensional in the NFL! Especially when you get into the RedZone, you have to run the football. I understand that people think it's a passing league, but football 101 is football 101. Running the ball is just as important now as it was in 1989 when Jerry bought the team.
Additionally, in what world did Jerry think this team was built to be a strictly passing game? Besides Lamb, Ferguson, and maybe Tolbert of late, where do we have enough receivers to be able to throw every play? The dbs can just double our receivers and cover the TE, and we have no other competent weapons. That's easy for defences nowadays. Oh, and we can't run, so they don't have to fear us running it down the gut even if we wanted to. I'm not saying Derrick Henry was a sure-fire success, but at least he'd have presented for $6 mil a threat of a run. At least I'd be able to appreciate the effort from Jerry. Instead, there was no effort to fix this. There was no effort to help the offense. Mahomes has Pacheco and enough weapons to compete. The Chiefs make sure to give Mahomes the weapons he needs to succeed. Jerry hinders Dak at every turn with his lack of effort. If Patrick Mahomes was quarterbacking the Cowboys this season, we probably are sitting at 3-3 anyway just with the construction of this team.
Then, you look at the defence. We all knew entering the season our weaknesses there. Yet, Jerry doesn't do anything to fix that either. So, naturally, we can't stop the run. It makes our pass defence vulnerable because now they have to be extra focused on the run, and we concede 44 to the Saints, 31 to the Ravens, and 47 to Detroit! You can't expect to win many football games when your defence is conceding that many points on a regular basis. Yet, again, this is the fault of Jerry for the construction of the team. Does he care? No! Of course not! If he did, he'd get a GM that can actually build a competitive team. But hey, where's the fun in that when he can make $10 billion just for sitting back and doing nothing? Why work when you can make $10 bil for nothing? That's the easiest gig ever!
The worst part is, short of Jerry selling the team, which I know he won't do, I'm not sure how this team gets fixed. This is going to take more than one offseason at this point to fix such a glaring structural weakness. It's like building a plane with a very weak hull. Of course it's going to explode in the air. It was doomed from the time it left the hangar. Now, it's going to cost him more in parts and labour to fix than to just build a new team all together. This season is a bust because of years of lack of effort. Years of lack of maintenance. Years of ignoring the problem with a few star players masking the weaknesses. Now, those structural problems are so glaring that there's no way to mask it. The engine is on fire, and there's not a fire extinguisher that can put it out now. It has to burn out as the team implodes on itself like Texas Stadium and then be rebuilt entirely.
The worst part for Jerry is, that Packers playoff game may be the last playoff game he's alive to see with how much is going to be necessary to rebuild this team. The worst part for us is we are going to have to sit through this as we probably have a repeat of the very years I started watching this team when we went 5-11 for 3 years in a row. At this point, he may as well rehire Dave Campo as HC because of how bad this team is structurally ATM. Now, it's going to take more than a running back and a NT. Now, we also need more linebackers, more olinemen, and a host of other areas for depth. That's more than one draft can fix. Unless Jerry is willing to go into a cap spending spree to sign as many quality free agents as possible to fix the holes and get the rest in the draft, we aren't going to be relevant much less competitive for the next several years. It's entirely Jerry's fault, and we all, from the coaches to the players to the fans, are going to suffer for it while Jerry gets to rake in the money.
