The Dallas Cowboys are a meager 3-7 after week 11 of the season. The team that had aspirations to make a deep playoff run — which has too often been promised to fans by owner and general manager Jerry Jones — is now on a prayer to even make the playoffs; the team is well below .500 almost three months into the NFL season.
The Cowboys are heading into a tough matchup in week 12, playing the Washington Commanders, their division rivals, who are 7-4.
The Commanders utilize young, agile quarterback Jayden Daniels, who can easily sprint through a weak Cowboys defense.
And now the Dallas Cowboys have serious injury concerns, with their highest-paid player, Dak Prescott, sustaining a major hamstring injury and needing season-ending surgery.
The possibility of the Dallas Cowboys making the playoffs, much less making the deep playoff run promised to fans, is disappearing.
Jerry Jones is the problem.
Throughout the 29th season of the Super Bowl drought the Dallas Cowboys have faced, there’s been one recurring problem: a lazy, lethargic, money-crazy front office consisting of Jerry and Stephen Jones.
Last year, after a crushing and shocking defeat to the Green Bay Packers in the wildcard playoff round, the Cowboys organization pledged to be all in. They also promised a big splash in free agency and during the off-season, as they so typically do.
Their “big splash” turned out to be a huge loss, with starting running back Tony Pollard leaving in free agency to the Tennessee Titans.
Who did they replace Pollard with? 29-year-old Ezekiel Elliott, who the Dallas Cowboys had cut the last off-season.
Elliott’s age had been showing for a long time before the Cowboys cut him in 2023. His lack of production was evident with his 1,400 rushing yard seasons being long gone. Zeke had trouble putting up 1,000 yards in 2020 and 2021, and from 2022 to 2024, he had a total of 1,689 rushing yards with only 17 touchdown runs as of week 11 in the 2024 season.
So why in the world would the Dallas Cowboys bring Elliott back instead of re-signing Pollard or signing a running back that wasn’t so evidently in decline?
Because the Dallas Cowboys have a dysfunctional philosophy. The team’s front office frankly doesn’t care about fans, coaches, players, or even the success of the team.
Quite simply, they only care about money.
The Dallas Cowboys, being the most valuable sports franchise in the world at an estimated $9 billion, are not lacking in money.
Yet Stephen Jones — son of owner Jerry Jones — explained to fans and media that the team’s lack of off-season acquisitions is because the organization is apparently “running out of pie,” the Joneses’ favorite phrase for saying they’re running out of money.
The truth, though, is that America’s team is nowhere near short on pie.
The nickname of “America’s team” is not a lie. Bleacher Report claimed that the Cowboys are the sixth most popular sports franchise in the world, only behind soccer clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid.
The Dallas Cowboys have the most viewership out of any other NFL team at an average of 25.18 million viewers.
They raked in $125 million from ticket sales in the 2023 season alone, excluding concessions and merchandise sales in the stadium.
This year, the team had $20,580,152 in cap space to spend.
This is evidence that the team has plenty of pie to spend on free agency and paying young stars like Micah Parsons.
In 2024, Tony Pollard’s cap hit is only $4,000,000 for the Tennessee Titans. This is only 20% of the Dallas Cowboys’ total cap space this year. Granted, Pollard’s contract is back-loaded, meaning most of the cap hit comes later into his contract. Even so his cap hit in 2025 will be only $8,500,000, and in 2026, will be $9,250,000.
Instead, they opted to pay a burnt-out 29-year-old Ezekiel Elliott a one-year $2,000,000 contract. This is not the behavior of a team that is “all-in” and willing to make a deep playoff run, as the Cowboys’ front office claims — It’s the behavior of a team that is using their money conservatively.
After years of fans and NFL experts making cases to fire head coach Mike McCarthy, the Joneses still refuse to do it. Year after year of playoff losses in the first two rounds, and Mike McCarthy is still the coach of America’s team.
Some fans ask why? Why is McCarthy still head coach when he’s so obviously not the person that can be all-in like the Joneses promise to be?
The reason is that Jerry and Stephen Jones don’t want to do a coaching search. If they ever were to fire McCarthy, they would just hire the assistant head coach or offensive coordinator from their own team.
The Joneses are too lazy to interview candidates from other organizations, much less do multiple rounds of interviews to see which candidates fit their supposed “all-in” attitude.
The truth is the Dallas Cowboys don’t want a coach with an all-in attitude. They want a coach who’s okay with a 10-7 record and a first round exit in the playoffs as long as he can still make them money.
All the Joneses care about are ticket sales, online merchandise sales, and how much deeper they can make their own pockets — not the success of the team, and much less the happiness of fans and players.
The team the Joneses want is a mediocre, fringe playoff team that can sell seats and fill their own coffers.
With no end in sight, disappointment will be the fate of the Dallas Cowboys until the Joneses sell the team, which is an outcome that is hard to foresee happening.
