Time for a reality check

Not every team will be winning the Super Bowl this 2022 season. Let's bring it back down for a moment. The Dallas Cowboys are a team littered with red flags.

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OK, everyone. Let’s gather ‘round.

It’s time to look in the mirror. We’ve been awfully chipper these last few weeks in this space on Chase Edmonds and Rachaad White and Kenny Clark and that Cincinnati Bengals secondary.

Granted, everyone tends to be in a good mood through July and August. Optimism is brimming in all 32 NFL markets because all 32 teams can sell hope. Fantastical, limitless, sign-this-dotted-line-for-your-season-tickets hope. It’s all butterflies, all sunshine this time of year when — in reality — half of the 32 teams are bound to stink. There’s a club out there bound to rot from within like those Dave Gettleman-led New York Giants and there’s a Super Bowl contender destined to fracture.

The trick is forecasting which teams are on the precipice of failure because it’s not like warts are on public display. These exhibition games don’t tell us much and coaches aren’t going to broadcast their deepest fears in front of a microphone.

But let’s give it a try.

The more you hear out of Dallas, the more these Cowboys smell like every Cowboys team the last 26 Super Bowl-less seasons. A distraught third cousin really should’ve stood up and objected at this wedding from the jump. Mike McCarthy won a Super Bowl in Green Bay but, over time, McCarthy also developed a bizarre knack for repeating the same mistakes. Consequently, his offense went stale and his quarterback ran him out of town. Then, there’s Jerry Jones. The Cowboys’ owner won three Super Bowls in the early 90s but while simultaneously turning this into the richest team in all of professional sports (as an owner), he mastered the art of repeating blunders (as an NFL general manager).

Let’s not forget McCarthy admitting at his introductory press conference that he fibbed in his job interview.

Now, beneath the sheath of optimism, are a ton of red flags in Big D.

I suppose everything in Dallas reverts back to one question: Where do the fresh ideas come from?

Neither individual in charge has shown an ability to evolve, to innovate. Behind the scenes, Will McClay has been a white knight saving the Jones boys from their worst impulses but the team’s VP of player personnel can only do so much. Jerry will Jerry. As we covered in our three-part series this time last year, “Jerry’s World” is a weird, wacky place with problems to its very core. One longtime Cowboy described the organization as “morally corrupt.” If you’re partying with the Joneses, there’s a good chance you’ll maintain job security. (When you’re in, this player said, “you’re in.”)

“It’s almost mafia-like,” this player said. “They hang together. They run together. There’s a lot of people within that organization that do some crazy shit together. It’s a little backwards. … (Jones) has that Michael Irvin in him. Irvin could party until 3 or 4 in the morning and he’s up at 5, 6 balling. And he’d go the whole day. That’s Jerry.”

Many people in the know were not surprised to see photos of Jones with strippers surface.

Maybe we could laugh off these partying ways if it didn’t seem like the franchise itself was run in such cavalier fashion. It is.