‘Stunned’ Cowboys seek offseason answers — yet again

ARLINGTON, Texas — The silence was deep.

As the players walked through the bowels of AT&T Stadium to the locker room, not a single member of the Dallas Cowboys said a word. Their 48-32 loss to the Green Bay Packers in the wild-card round ended a few minutes earlier.

A hopeful season was over. Just like that.

In the locker room, the players hugged each other. The coaches did the same. Dan Quinn, perhaps in his final days as the Cowboys defensive coordinator with head coaching interviews coming up, sat next to a few of his defensive linemen. Some players took a while to get dressed, sitting almost in disbelief.

Just three hours earlier, they were expecting to play a divisional game at home next weekend. Now, they won't be back in their own stadium until next summer for a preseason game.

“Yeah, it’s a shock,” quarterback Dak Prescott said. “I certainly didn’t think we would be here, from everything I can promise you – myself, this team, this organization – that this would be it.

“Credit to those [Packers] guys. They came here and ran their business. I mean no disrespect to those guys, but it was just the confidence that this group had, and what we did, and of course what we did at home. So yes, to be honest with you, it will take a little longer to fully digest it. Dazed.”

In the regular season, the Cowboys were 8-0 at AT&T Stadium. They were the only team to go undefeated at home in 2023. But the Packers tore through the defense on their first drive to score a touchdown, aided by two Cowboys penalties. With 1:50 left in the half, Green Bay safety Darnell Savage returned a Prescott interception 64 yards for a touchdown and a 27-0 lead.

At one point, Savage's return yards were greater than Prescott's passing yards. Receiver CeeDee Lamb, who set team records with 135 receptions and 1,749 yards in the regular season, had no catches before the two-minute warning. A Cowboys defense that throttled quarterbacks most of the time during the regular season couldn't do anything against Jordan Love. In the first half, he completed 13 of 16 passes for 185 yards and one of his three touchdowns. Running back Aaron Jones had scored two of his three touchdowns less than a minute into the second quarter.

“I don’t think anyone saw this coming,” coach Mike McCarthy said.

Owner and general manager Jerry Jones had only thought about a playoff game next week and was caught off guard by the performance. Cameras caught him showing his frustration after another Packers touchdown.

The Cowboys battled to win the NFC East for the second time in three years, but were helped by the collapse of the Philadelphia Eagles, who fell from 10-1 to 11-6. With the loss to the Packers, the Cowboys are the first team to win 12 games in three consecutive seasons and fail to win a conference title game in any of them since the 1970 merger.

“We got everything we wanted at the top seed, on the field, everything,” Lamb said. “We just didn’t capitalize.”

And now 2023 is like 2022 and 2021 and every playoff season since 1995.

This time there could be changes, although Jones said he hasn't thought “for a second” about McCarthy's future. The Cowboys have 16 players on their 53-man roster who are set to benefit from unrestricted free agency. They want to sign Lamb and potentially linebacker Micah Parsons to contract extensions. They need to find a solution to Prescott's $59.4 million salary cap hit in 2024.

After the Cowboys beat the Washington Commanders to close out the regular season, Parsons said it was time to be “phenomenal or be forgotten.”

Despite all the good the Cowboys have done in 2023 — including Prescott's league-leading 36 touchdown passes and improvements with McCarthy's play-calling, Lamb's production, Parsons' career-high in sacks (14), DaRon Bland's league-leading nine interceptions and NFL-record five pick-sixes — none of that mattered.

The Cowboys had nine players named All-Pro on the first or second team.

None of this matters.

“No,” Lamb said. “Not at all, not at all.”

“Seventeen weeks is a season in itself, and then you have a four-week season after that,” Lamb said. “So whatever you do during these four weeks, I mean, that’s how you’ll be remembered.”

For the 28th consecutive time, a Cowboys season ended without a Super Bowl. The names have changed over the years, but the answers remain the same.

How do the Cowboys get to where they want to go in the playoffs?

“I wish I had that answer for you,” Prescott said.

McCarthy too. Jones too. So does everyone else.