Cowboys Forever Next Year’s Team

Somehow, against all reason, against all logic, the Cowboys still breathe. They were walking on bent knees. They were breathing with bloody noses. And they’ve spent the better part of the past 59 minutes trying to invent new levels of self-sabotage.

However, they were here. 14 seconds left. They lost up to six points. They are at the 49ers’ 41-yard line. If you didn’t have access to the scoreboard, you’d think the Niners gained six ground hits, not six. But this is the playoffs. Things happen.

Now this. Now Dak Prescott has captured a moment, with the pleas of 90,000 voices ringing in his ears, and no doubt he’ll snap one or two more pictures in the margins, then try a Hail . Why not? It was the Cowboys, after all, who invented the Hail Mary playoff afternoon playoff in Bloomington, Minn, where, in 1975, Roger Staubach met Drew Pearson.

The rootless American segment for Team America is prepared for that.

But then we were reminded: these Cowboys are not your Dad’s Cowboys. They are not your grandfather’s Cowboys. As the knockouts go on, they shrink and shrink. When the money is on the table, they let others take it.

With the season still around, Prescott ran for it.

It’s jarring. It was great. It has no meaning. He was up 17 yards but by the end of the game the last seconds of the clock were gone. The Cowboys try to line up. They try to beat the clock. They did not. Clock hits 0:00. The sound cauldron at AT&T Stadium a second before became a morgue.

The transcript screams remarkable news: 49ers 23, Cowboys 17.

“I thought everything was going well — until it didn’t,” Prescott said afterward, trying to explain the inexplicable.

Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said: “It was the right decision.

Not only was it a bad decision, of course, but it was also an indefensible decision. For the Cowboys, all in an empty quarter of a century, it always seems to be the next year. Since winning their last Super Bowl championship in January 1996, the Cowboys have won four playoffs. This year will be different. This year, in different stages of the season, they have the most explosive attack in the league and the most dangerous defense.

For a number of weeks, Prescott looked like an MVP candidate.

But Sunday, again, with the only bets that mattered piling up on the table, the Cowboys were defeated by one of their arch-enemies. The Niners had an early 13-0 lead and it looks like they’ll be sailing to Green Bay next week. Things are not so easy. But the statement was resounding.

“The first one is always the hardest,” McCarthy says in an apparently hilarious song. “We were a bit nervous at the start of the game. Once we settle in, it’s a contest. ”

That will be little consolation for members of the Cowboys’ massive fan base, and less solace for owner Jerry Jones.

“I’m just disappointed that we were in that position,” Jones said later, another season of complete displeasure filling the books. “Not only our staff but also our season, I don’t think I’ll be standing here with you guys tonight for a visit like this, that’s for sure.”

(And, look: we know about the obvious failures around here, football wise, especially if you happen to be supporting the Giants. What was the old expression? my is my friend?Sunday Giants fans have gone especially crazy with the Buccaneers and Niners, temporary allies who helped make it through to the NFC East knockout round. there.)

And the Cowboys still have a shot. Jimmy Garoppolo made a terrible tackle. There was a turn-around, and a brutal penalty by the 49ers, and the Cowboys got the ball once more, another chance. But this isn’t Roger Staubach in Minnesota in 1975. It’s another quarterback, another time, another dojo.

“Hard to accept,” Prescott said. “Definitely hard to accept.”

Clocks in, and the season is over on the Cowboys, once Team America, now forever Next Year’s Team.