Improvement starts when you accept what you are

[Rockport]

That’s true. But what happened in 2017 and 2019?

I'm not talking about those years. I'm just trying to explain what happened this year. Just because there was a Covid outbreak in 2020 doesn't mean there will be another new outbreak in 2021. Every year is different. Every team is different. By your reasoning, and so many others here, there is no hope for you guys. If there's no hope for you then why are you even here?

 

[willia451]

>Improvement starts when you accept what you are

Invalid. They've obviously accepted it for quite some amount of time.

 

[jsb357]

He went to his grave still believing he was the man who could turn around the Raiders

Actually Al Davis got the Raiders to a SB this century.

Lost but hey they got there.

 

[Dre11]

I'm guessing you have a similar laundry list of excuses for the previous 25 years as well.

Every team has injuries. The Browns and Commanders new coaches had "no chance to install their system" yet they're in the playoffs and the Browns won 11 games. The Commanders used 3 QBs. But yes, only Dallas had to deal with things.

We'll get 'em next year!

Except they didnt lose what we lost in key spots, As for the WFT, they ended up with playing the better, more veteran QB, We played a lesser qb all the way down to a 7th rounder. its idiotic to compare those teams issues to ours. In Washington, all 3 backups were better than the starter...lol

 

[Bobhaze]

NFL is a season to season thing, I don't believe in lumping each seasons together, each season has its own challenges. Anybody who says this team wouldn't have been the best team in the division if healthy is just being overly critical.

Dre I agree with you that the NFL is a season to season thing. But I also believe big picture trends are a thing too. Like only making the playoffs 7 of 21 years and not making the playoffs 3 of the last 4 years. All those years under the same organizational leaders. Those trends are things worth noticing. They are patterns that keep repeating year after year. We can’t blame missing the playoffs 3 of the last 4 years on injuries, or the refs, or just Jason Garrett.

 

[DandyDon52]

When your favorite team is bad, and you watch them play every week, you get used to seeing bad players making bad plays. When occasionally, a few of those players make some good plays, many of us get suckered into thinking, “Hey that guy is pretty good.” Compared to what?

When your favorite team only makes the playoffs 7 of the last 21 seasons, the bar gets lowered. We are so starved to see something good, I think sometimes we see “good” in players that in reality aren’t as good as we would love to think.

That in a nutshell is one of the biggest problems with this entire organization. This FO vastly overrates its talent, while also vastly overrating their own abilities to right this organization’s 25 year drift to consistent playoff irrelevance. Let’s face it, 30 other owners would have fired this GM and his children long ago.

What I hope is Mike McCarthy (or someone JJ listens to) has the stones to tell his bosses a series of truths that need to be addressed:

• This roster needs a major overhaul to be competitive for something more than mediocrity. We cannot sit pat. We must accept who we are: A below average football team.
• We need at least 7 new starters on defense. Keepers: DLaw, Gregory, Diggs, and maybe LVE although he’s so fragile, he’s probably worth considering a replacement.
• We need help on offense too. We may need a LT sooner than many want to believe.
  
• This isn’t just a talent problem. It’s a culture problem.
• This culture is diseased. There is a lack of focus and commitment from top to bottom. It’s been there for far too long. These players need to be challenged to show something more or we will keep getting what we’re getting.

We all want this team to improve and start competing. But this team needs a butt kicker in the locker room to start expecting more. Maybe have a Jimmy J training camp again complete with an asthma field.

And finally- like any organization that has 33% rate of even qualifying to compete for a championship, you won’t get better until you look in the mirror and admit your team sucks and you’re sick of losing and everything that contributes to it. Currently I don’t get the feeling from enough people at the Star to make a difference yet. Until enough people get sick of this repeated failure, expect the same.

No one has the stones, and even if they did , it would go in one ear and out the other.
The jones boys are what they are and they wont change. They are having fun, and evidently never tire of failures.
I give up on them, and the team. I know now it will never get better or what it should be , so better to get behind another team that knows
what they are doing, and enjoy some success.
I will still watch the cowboys,but I wont expect or hope for any success other than what they have had before like 14 16 and 18, I think that is about as
good as it will ever get.

 

[Dre11]

Dre I agree with you that the NFL is a season to season thing. But I also believe big picture trends are a thing too. Like only making the playoffs 7 of 21 years and not making the playoffs 3 of the last 4 years. All those years under the same organizational leaders. Those trends are things worth noticing. They are patterns that keep repeating year after year. We can’t blame missing the playoffs 3 of the last 4 years on injuries, or the refs, or just Jason Garrett.

didn't say every year its about injuries, this year it was about injuries. those other years have nothing to do with this year.

 

[windward]

I'm not talking about those years. I'm just trying to explain what happened this year. Just because there was a Covid outbreak in 2020 doesn't mean there will be another new outbreak in 2021. Every year is different. Every team is different. By your reasoning, and so many others here, there is no hope for you guys. If there's no hope for you then why are you even here?

Misery loves company.

 

[Bobhaze]

I'm not talking about those years. I'm just trying to explain what happened this year. Just because there was a Covid outbreak in 2020 doesn't mean there will be another new outbreak in 2021. Every year is different. Every team is different. By your reasoning, and so many others here, there is no hope for you guys. If there's no hope for you then why are you even here?

I talked about my hopes in the OP at great length. But in my view hope gets oxygen from competence and success. Here’s some hope I have: our leaders will recognize that the way they run this organization isn’t working if winning playoff games is the goal. That’s hope.

 

[CouchCoach]

Well said and well reasoned brother. The only place I differ with you is I don’t think this team has “above average talent”. It’s average at best. There is certainly some talent here, mostly on offense. But when you factor in the current defense with the offense when healthy, overall it’s average IMO.

That whole "talented team" thing escaped me. It is an evaluation of the weakest links in the chain.

Take Jaylon Smith, they're making something out of him being 3rd in tackles at LB and leading the team in tackles. Tackles and this team don't jive. The worst run D in the league isn't a tackling team. He also was the healthiest LB of the bunch and got the most plays.

How could anyone look at the middle of that DL, the MLB and secondary and consider this a talented team? Skill positions on the O? Yep, in the top 5 there.

And in the NFL this year, talent extended to the 2nd team and in some cases, third.

To really assess talent, and I am not qualified to do this, you would need to compare every starter at every position and rank the players. How many would the Cowboys have in the top 5, 10, 15?

 

[CouchCoach]

The sad part of this is there wasn't enough pain for Booger to do anything and that's what it takes....pain. The avoidance of pain is a much stronger motivator than the desire for gain.

His bragging about attendance shows where his head is. Hey, wasn't great but better than anyone else.

There isn't anything that can cause him enough pain to change the way he does things. Nothing.

I had a brief party when they flexed the SF game and he responded with they did that to help the early games. I scoffed and that game was the highest CBS early game of the season. Folks, we can't win.

People are going to continue to financially support the team and watch this team on TV and I just don't get it. I have an excuse, I am a fan and not right in the head.

 

[Rockport]

I talked about my hopes in the OP at great length. But in my view hope gets oxygen from competence and success. Here’s some hope I have: our leaders will recognize that the way they run this organization isn’t working if winning playoff games is the goal. That’s hope.

So we agree on something at least.

 

[Diehardblues]

The sad part of this is there wasn't enough pain for Booger to do anything and that's what it takes....pain. The avoidance of pain is a much stronger motivator than the desire for gain.

His bragging about attendance shows where his head is. Hey, wasn't great but better than anyone else.

There isn't anything that can cause him enough pain to change the way he does things. Nothing.

I had a brief party when they flexed the SF game and he responded with they did that to help the early games. I scoffed and that game was the highest CBS early game of the season. Folks, we can't win.

People are going to continue to financially support the team and watch this team on TV and I just don't get it. I have an excuse, I am a fan and not right in the head.

No, we can’t win but we can continue to put the pressure on holding his feet to the fire forcing him to acknowledge and respond to the public pressure and ridicule .

He didn’t want to let Garrett go and looked for every angle waiting as long as he could to make that decision. That’s the kind of impact public pressure can have.

And losing does cause him to respond. Remaining relevant at 8-8 he can sell . He can sell 6-10 when it comes down to last week. But he can’t sell consecutive 5-11 seasons.

Which brought the best change we’ve seen the last 25 years. It was short lived and he ruined it eventually but that’s what it takes. Losing is the only pain that gets his attention.

 

[kskboys]

It's not an excuse, it is a fact. Jones could have just let that Super Bowl team move on whether just not trying to resign any of them, they still would have had to release some to get under the cap. In following years they could have not renegotiated contracts just to try to keep more of those core players and just released them and with all that dead money pilling up they wouldn't have money to sign their top draft picks so they could have traded out of the first and second rounds every year and just drafted 3rd round and lower because they would be cheaper to sign but also take longer to find that really good group of core players to build around. Jones would have turned into another Art Model and we all know what he did with the browns. But no, Jones did all he could to try to keep that core group of players from those Super Bowl teams with hopes of getting enough new talent to fill in and for depth to keep the Cowboys able to compete for more Super Bowls, but unfortunately those Super Bowl teams put the Cowboys is such a terrible situation. In the Super Bowl era there's never been any other team anywhere close that had to go through what the Cowboys had to over come because of the cap. You say that all this is just an excuse so please tell us how after you built up that Super Bowl team with the by far largest payroll in the league when there wasn't any cap and then hit with the cap just how you would have done things differently all the while trying to keep as much of your core players and try to still be able to compete.
.
.

No he didn't. Jones let a pile of good players walk to sign stars. He tried to keep Troy/Emmit/Irvin/Kevin Smith and then let these guys walk: Ken Norton, Gesek, Gogan, Cornish, Gant, Jeffcoat, Stepnoski, Washington were all let walk in order to pay the stars.

 

[Diehardblues]

I talked about my hopes in the OP at great length. But in my view hope gets oxygen from competence and success. Here’s some hope I have: our leaders will recognize that the way they run this organization isn’t working if winning playoff games is the goal. That’s hope.

We really need several years of bad losing to bring the changes needed.

It’s why he hangs on to his stars and overpays them cause he knows he can sell and maintain relevance or mediocrity to our craving and addicted fan base but he can’t sell consistent losing.

 

[Bobhaze]

That whole "talented team" thing escaped me. It is an evaluation of the weakest links in the chain.

Take Jaylon Smith, they're making something out of him being 3rd in tackles at LB and leading the team in tackles. Tackles and this team don't jive. The worst run D in the league isn't a tackling team. He also was the healthiest LB of the bunch and got the most plays.

How could anyone look at the middle of that DL, the MLB and secondary and consider this a talented team? Skill positions on the O? Yep, in the top 5 there.

And in the NFL this year, talent extended to the 2nd team and in some cases, third.

To really assess talent, and I am not qualified to do this, you would need to compare every starter at every position and rank the players. How many would the Cowboys have in the top 5, 10, 15?

Like you Coach, I’m not qualified to be a real judge of NFL talent, although we have a front office full of people named Jones who aren’t qualified either, lol.

But my concern bigger than even this team’s talent gaps- they don’t play as a team. We have a ton of fans and apparently Cowboys brass too who believe talent alone is enough to win playoff games. But we know that’s not true. We’ve had teams on several occasions that were talented enough to compete but never learned how to be a team, and what it takes to win as a team.

I’ve said many times, this organization has never seemed to grasp a basic football truth that the great Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne understood 85 years ago: “I don’t play my 11 best players. I play my best 11.” That’s a Football 101 too many folks in high places don’t understand.

 

[Diehardblues]

No he didn't. Jones let a pile of good players walk to sign stars. He tried to keep Troy/Emmit/Irvin/Kevin Smith and then let these guys walk: Ken Norton, Gesek, Gogan, Cornish, Gant, Jeffcoat, Stepnoski, Washington were all let walk in order to pay the stars.

Just like we let 4 defensive starters walk last year while resigning Cooper and Elliott. Nothing has changed.

 

[ShaneFalco]

When your favorite team is bad, and you watch them play every week, you get used to seeing bad players making bad plays. When occasionally, a few of those players make some good plays, many of us get suckered into thinking, “Hey that guy is pretty good.” Compared to what?



When your favorite team only makes the playoffs 7 of the last 21 seasons, the bar gets lowered. We are so starved to see something good, I think sometimes we see “good” in players that in reality aren’t as good as we would love to think.

That in a nutshell is one of the biggest problems with this entire organization. This FO vastly overrates its talent, while also vastly overrating their own abilities to right this organization’s 25 year drift to consistent playoff irrelevance. Let’s face it, 30 other owners would have fired this GM and his children long ago.

What I hope is Mike McCarthy (or someone JJ listens to) has the stones to tell his bosses a series of truths that need to be addressed:

• This roster needs a major overhaul to be competitive for something more than mediocrity. We cannot sit pat. We must accept who we are: A below average football team.
• We need at least 7 new starters on defense. Keepers: DLaw, Gregory, Diggs, and maybe LVE although he’s so fragile, he’s probably worth considering a replacement.
• We need help on offense too. We may need a LT sooner than many want to believe.
  
• This isn’t just a talent problem. It’s a culture problem.
• This culture is diseased. There is a lack of focus and commitment from top to bottom. It’s been there for far too long. These players need to be challenged to show something more or we will keep getting what we’re getting.

We all want this team to improve and start competing. But this team needs a butt kicker in the locker room to start expecting more. Maybe have a Jimmy J training camp again complete with an asthma field.

And finally- like any organization that has 33% rate of even qualifying to compete for a championship, you won’t get better until you look in the mirror and admit your team sucks and you’re sick of losing and everything that contributes to it. Currently I don’t get the feeling from enough people at the Star to make a difference yet. Until enough people get sick of this repeated failure, expect the same.

 

[Diehardblues]

Like you Coach, I’m not qualified to be a real judge of NFL talent, although we have a front office full of people named Jones who aren’t qualified either, lol.

But my concern bigger than even this team’s talent gaps- they don’t play as a team. We have a ton of fans and apparently Cowboys brass too who believe talent alone is enough to win playoff games. But we know that’s not true. We’ve had teams on several occasions that were talented enough to compete but never learned how to be a team, and what it takes to win as a team.

I’ve said many times, this organization has never seemed to grasp a basic football truth that the great Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne understood 85 years ago: “I don’t play my 11 best players. I play my best 11.” That’s a Football 101 too many folks in high places don’t understand.

They are actually more qualified than most of us. They have access to so much more info and film. And insiders, coaching and scouts to inform and influence their decisions.

Ive always argued if all NFL teams followed our model with the owners serving as GM’s we’d have more success cause our owners are Football guys. Just not as good as some of the better organizations in the league.

What’s amazing are the franchises that actually follow better models have less success than us . But at least they have the opportunity to finally hire the right people and get it right.

 

[romomania]