Let’s say right away that none of it matters without wins on the field. For all the words of positivity and affirmation that we can heap upon the Dallas Cowboys, without results on the football field they ring hollow and remind us that it has been 30 years since they won big.
Everyone understands this. We are the ones who have been living the 30-year walk, after all. We have all raised our hopes around the Cowboys in the past thinking that there was no way Lucy would pull the ball again. Lo and behold,
that is sort of her thing.
This offseason feels a little different, though.
The biggest win of the Dallas Cowboys offseason
It can be true that it is different, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee change.
The Cowboys were active in free agency. Heck, they handed out the biggest deal in free agency that they had since Brandon Carr in 2012. Jalen Thompson was the player who signed it, something that feels like an afterthought after Caleb Downs landed at The Star alongside his draft class that has everybody all excited.
Good players are critical. That goes without saying. The Cowboys bringing in a lot of them is arguably their biggest win of the offseason as a whole as they are significantly re-shaping their roster, particularly on the defensive side of the ball under new defensive coordinator Christian Parker. That is another argument for biggest win of the offseason, for sure.
If you asked me though, the biggest win of the offseason so far is something that doesn’t exist at all: Drama.
A year ago any conversation around the Cowboys involved the pending Micah Parsons extension. That went so far and so deep through things that it wasn’t resolved until a literal week before the season began. It goes without saying that this got things off to a bad start.
The year before featured twice the fun as CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott (for a second time) were in standoffs with the team. The former held out and had to wait until the Oxnard portion of training camp was over to get his deal while the latter saw things get done on the literal day that the season began. This team has had the cloud of contract drama hanging over them through August in back to back seasons.
Consider that we are still barely a week into May and that all of this has been nipped in the bud. Brandon Aubrey has a deal, a long-term one at that, and somehow the Cowboys were fortunate enough to see George Pickens actually sign his franchise tag. There is not a cloud in the sky.
Drama has been The Thing in more ways than one
Aside from dealing with contract negotiations with their star players, the Cowboys have had other elephants in the room commanding their attention.
Underneath the issues around Lamb and Prescott two years ago was the fact that then-head coach Mike McCarthy was entering the final year of his own contract. This created questions around what the future looked like, another cloud in the sky keeping the sunshine out.
Last year wasn’t quite the same, but it was obviously the first year under head coach Brian Schottenheimer. This created a sense of newness, but given that it was his first year as a head coach it also was something that came with a learning curve.
The point here isn’t to simply list out the changes that the Cowboys have undergone in recent years. The point is that there has been no stable ground for the franchise to stand on during the time in question as a result. For the first time in at least three years, the Cowboys are solid, stable, and planted.
Obviously the players matter as noted, but so does overall continuity. Nobody involved has to answer questions about someone else’s contract or a lame duck status or anything to do with ownership practices. For the first time in about 1,000 days the football part of who the Dallas Cowboys are is center stage. Finally.
As noted, the only thing that will justify things at the end of all of this is whether or not the team wins. That is a hard thing to do, but at the very least the team has put themselves in the best position possible to undertake that task.
