The Dallas Cowboys arrive at their traditional Thanksgiving Day game with their latest season of high hopes mostly in tatters.
They’re much closer to last place than first place in the NFC East. Owner Jerry Jones’s huge investments in quarterback Dak Prescott and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb have produced disappointing results in what is almost certain to be another season without the Super Bowl return that has eluded Jones for nearly three decades.
An offseason reset probably beckons, with coach Mike McCarthy’s contract set to expire and conjecture about Bill Belichick and Deion Sanders being among the team’s prospective coaching candidates come January.
But just when it seemed safe to move on from the 2024 Cowboys and begin to focus on what the 2025 Cowboys might be, they provided a twist. What was widely expected to be another routine loss instead somehow morphed into a stupefying victory Sunday over the Washington Commanders at Northwest Stadium, and the Cowboys were left to speak about the prospect of crafting a winning streak when they host the New York Giants on Thursday.
“I told you: I’m not done yet,” star pass rusher Micah Parsons said in the Cowboys’ postgame locker room Sunday in Landover. “I don’t plan on tanking. If the higher-ups [are] looking for a draft pick, I hope that’s ruined because we’ve got a lot of football left to play. Like I said, as long as I’m a part of this team, we’re always going to fight. I’m always going to give maximum effort. I owe it to these guys. I owe it to the fans that come out.”
The Cowboys will take a record of 4-7 into the Thanksgiving matchup with the Giants, who are 2-9 and in the NFC East basement. It’s most likely a quarterbacking matchup of the Cowboys’ Cooper Rush, filling in for Prescott after the NFL’s highest-paid player underwent season-ending surgery for a hamstring injury, against the Giants’ Tommy DeVito, the second-year pro and former undrafted rookie who was promoted from third-string to starter last week when Daniel Jones was benched and then released.
It’s not exactly what Jerry Jones had in mind when, coming off three straight 12-5 seasons that were followed by bitter postseason disappointments, he gave Lamb a four-year, $136 million contract extension in August, then made Prescott the league’s first $60 million-per-season player with a four-year, $240 million extension in September. The idea was to get the Cowboys back to a Super Bowl for the first time since January 1996, when they won their third Super Bowl in four years.
Instead, they have suffered from key injuries to Prescott, Parsons, pass rusher DeMarcus Lawrence, cornerback DaRon Bland and others. The defense has struggled after coordinator Dan Quinn left to become the Commanders’ head coach. The offense has labored with a practically nonexistent running game, a wide receiver corps that lacks a consistent No. 2 option behind Lamb and a once-great line that no longer approaches that standard.
The Cowboys’ victory Sunday was their first since Oct. 6, snapping a five-game skid. All it took was two fourth-quarter kickoff returns for touchdowns and the Commanders missing a would-be tying extra point with 21 seconds remaining after the Dallas defense inexplicably allowed an 86-yard touchdown catch and run by wide receiver Terry McLaurin.
“I thought the game was over like six or seven times,” Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey said after the 34-26 triumph.
Rush called it “pretty insane” and “crazy.” Parsons said he had “never been a part of something like that.” McCarthy characterized it as “just a game-situational extravaganza” that was “like Yahtzee. Everything was in there.”
But at least it was a win.
“We’ve been talking about finding a way to win a game, whatever it looks like,” Aubrey said. “It’s not going to be pretty every game. This one certainly wasn’t pretty. But we found a way to win at the end. And that’s what it’s all about.”
Said McCarthy: “It’s just great to see our guys rewarded for just staying the course and just grinding it out. The messaging has been great. Going up into it, no one’s really blinking, just with everything going [on] around us. It feels good to win. It’s been a minute.”
Can the Cowboys actually turn around their season? That’s quite a long shot. They haven’t even won a game at home all season, having been outscored by 23.6 points per game while going 0-5 at AT&T Stadium. But at least they could speak in hopeful terms for a few days.
“You’ve just got to get that ball rolling,” Rush said. “That’s kind of what we talked about. That was the messaging all week: Get one, get one, get one. And especially going into a short week, you know you can get two real quick, too.”
Said Parsons: “Obviously ending the losing streak is good. But it’s like: What are you going to do the next couple weeks? All right, you can do it one time. But what is greatness? Consistency. So I would like us to do it against the Giants, get a win there and then get ready for the December schedule.”
Jones agreed with Parsons’s anti-tanking view during a radio interview Tuesday, saying there is no consideration of the Cowboys trying to lose games to improve draft-choice positioning. He also said he has not ruled out retaining McCarthy beyond this season, which would require a contract extension.
“I don’t think that’s crazy at all,” Jones told Dallas station 105.3 The Fan. “That’s not crazy. Listen, Mike McCarthy is one outstanding coach. … This is a Super Bowl-winning coach. And Mike McCarthy has been there, done that. He’s got great ideas. So the bottom line is that no place in my body language or anything else have you seen indications about what we’re going to be doing relative to this [coaching] staff at the end of this year. And we shouldn’t. We’ve got a lot of football left. … Boy, six football games, that’s a lifetime.”
Still, the more realistic view is that the Cowboys have dug a hole too deep to climb out, and that Jones probably will be looking for a new coach in January. Many in and around the sport were surprised when Jones stuck with McCarthy following a stunning opening-round home playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers, the team that McCarthy once coached to a Super Bowl title. Belichick was available then, having just parted with the New England Patriots following 24 seasons and six Super Bowl triumphs. Belichick is still available now, doing broadcasting work while spending this season out of coaching.
Could he coexist with Jones, the most hands-on and omnipresent of owners who also has the general manager title and routinely holds court with reporters outside the Cowboys’ locker room following home games? One agent who represents coaches but does not represent Belichick said recently that it may not be quite as odd of a pairing as some observers might believe, given that Belichick’s close ally Bill Parcells once worked for Jones.
“They just might need each other at this point,” the agent said of Jones and Belichick.
Then there is Sanders, the Hall of Fame cornerback who won a Super Bowl playing for the Cowboys. Sanders has said he’s happy coaching at the University of Colorado and does not intend to jump to the NFL. And the Buffaloes landed a top quarterback recruit – and a potential replacement for Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son – when five-star prospect Julian Lewis announced his commitment to Colorado last week.
Former Cowboys great Michael Irvin has said that he will lobby Jones to hire Deion Sanders, assuming that Jones does not retain McCarthy.
Jones said last week of Sanders during a radio appearance on the same station: “I think we’re way ahead of ourselves relative to when and if he decides to go into coaching in the NFL. And one of his greatest skills that he really brings to college is that he almost has no peer as far as being a recruiter. I mean, kids want to come play for him. … And that is one skill, that recruiting skill, that is not a huge prerequisite for NFL coaches. … But make no mistake about it, he’s one of the top people, young and old, that I’ve been around in the NFL.”
Jones’s options also could include Mike Vrabel, the former NFL coach of the year for the Tennessee Titans who is now a consultant for the Cleveland Browns.
In the meantime, the Cowboys have a season to play out.
“This is deeper than just wins,” Parsons said Sunday. “At one point, I think this is just about pride. It’s easy to play when we’re up. People call us front-runners. Now, playing behind the eight ball, let’s see how we can handle adversity and see if we can make a playoff run. But we’ve got a long ways to go.”