We have all experienced devastating losses to the Dallas Cowboys. Choose your favorite. Maybe it was the play that immediately came to mind when Dez caught it. Maybe it was the Tony Romo bump. Maybe you’re thinking of the 1994 NFC Championship Game. Chances are it was a playoff loss and we’re all aware that there have been (almost) a lot of those to choose from over the last 30 years.

If you think about the regular season losses, they obviously aren’t the same, but the 2011-2013 finals are up there. Clearly, 44-6 has a terribly special place in history. But even then, those games were effective playoff games, with the resulting losses officially ending the season.

It’s extremely difficult to pinpoint one of the most disappointing losses in Cowboys franchise history that led to so much devastation in the month of October. There’s simply too much football left to play before even a hit hits the ground before Halloween even comes. But it kind of feels like we’re here now.

Sure, the Cowboys are still alive in a technical and literal sense regarding this season and the playoff chase. Maybe one day we’ll laugh at how we all overreacted on October 14, 2024. We can only hope (in more ways than one).

Sunday’s loss to the Detroit Lions felt like something different for the Cowboys to process, but we’ll do our best regardless. This is our Day After Thoughts conversation where we let a night’s sleep and many cups of coffee determine how we feel about the action we just saw.

We will address three thoughts specifically.

It’s getting old fashioned to blame the front office, but this is squarely and squarely their responsibility

The Dallas Cowboys have a lot of problems right now. Choose one. Every one of them. The list is long. But it may be true that players are not meeting expectations, that coaches are failing to raise the overall standard, and that everything is built on a shaky foundation by the “work” the front office has done over the years . out of season. Yes. It could all be true.

The front office infamously did nothing substantial to help the team this offseason through roster moves. What’s more is that they delayed paying their superstars, players who play very expensive positions, until literally the eleventh hour and as a result paid significantly more (in all likelihood based on NFL trends) than if they were on these fronts had been proactive.

To make matters worse, they seemed to wow fans with the potential of things at every opportunity and created an environment that is incredibly unsustainable. You can have issues with Mike McCarthy, we all do, but sending him into a contract year was asking for drama to circle the organization around every loss. It was not a stable decision.

The sins of the offseason cannot be undone in one fell swoop, especially in the fall months. At this point the bed is made. It remains very frustrating.

There’s no denying that this team needs to make some changes if they want to seriously compete

That said, some serious change could mean a lot.

After the game, Dak Prescott noted how similar this start to 2018 felt for the team. That group fell to 3-4 before their bye week and there’s a good chance it will get there coming out of theirs, as the next game is on the road against the big, bad San Francisco 49ers.

It was six years ago at that point when Dallas sent a future first-round pick to the then-Oakland Raiders in exchange for Amari Cooper. Cooper shocked the offense and the Philadelphia Eagles collapsed and everything was set for the Cowboys to win not only the NFC East, but a playoff game for the first time in the Dak Prescott era.

Cooper saved that season, to say the least, and we obviously saw how it all turned out. But the time is certainly now for an injection of help somewhere, wide receiver is certainly an option, before it’s too late. Trying to do this whole thing with the roster as it stands would be hard to justify, but maybe that’s what the Cowboys will do.

With the team in its bye week, it would stand to reason that this would be the time to reflect and make a move. We’ll see if they plan to do that.

It doesn’t feel like an exaggeration to say that hope is at a very low ebb compared to recent history

Wrapping up how we started, we note that the emotions, the atmosphere, whatever you want to call them, are pretty bad for the Cowboys right now.

The Detroit Lions are the talk of the town and are now the center of the NFL. They are the latest team to parade through AT&T Stadium and celebrate virtually from start to finish at the home team’s expense. The Cowboys are often compared to teams like the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers, Duke and Alabama, all because of the huge fan bases these teams have. Where the Cowboys are different is that each of these teams has climbed their respective mountain at some point in the last fifteen years. Those fans see people rooting against their team all the time, but they’ve also reached the other end of the spectrum. If you’re a Cowboys fan around the age of 40 or younger, you’ve only understood the negative side of this whole deal.

And these kinds of things are easier to tolerate and endure when it feels like there is a certain direction the team is going. But given the state of things and the way they’ve been since losing the playoffs, it feels like we’ve lost. at sea without any visibility.

Frankly, it stinks.