With all the terrible shit happening in the world — genocides playing out in plain sight, tech giants hoarding the spoils of the GDP, legendary film directors being brutally murdered in their home by their own offspring — the fate of a football team can seem like a silly thing to concern yourself with. Yet I would contend that in these dark times, anything that brings you joy is a worthwhile investment of your time and energy regardless of how shallow or trivial. Whether it’s grown men beating their brains out to move a balloon made of cowhide back and forth on a patch of grass or your fourth Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake of the day, I say, take your serotonin pumps wherever you can get them.
I suppose my family might argue that the amount of occasional serotonin release the Dallas Cowboys offer me isn’t sufficient to overcome the rise in cortisol level they generally cause, but I’m not sure a box of Little Debbies is any healthier, and one way or another we’re pushing that precious neurotransmitter across the appropriate synapse and getting that drip.
Sadly, with the inexplicable 34-26 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday Night Football, at least from football as a source, the serotonin well has run dry. The loss puts Dallas’ record at 6-7-1 and the team in need of a Christmas miracle to make the playoffs. Earning a postseason game would require the ’Boys to run the table and their NFC East rivals the Philadelphia Eagles to lose out. Though this year’s Philthy is definitely not the Super Bowl championship team from a year ago, while facing an extremely pedestrian Washington team with Marcus Mariota under center twice over the final three, there’s a better chance of the Mavericks winning the NBA draft lottery and selecting Duke phenom Cooper Flagg first overall. (In fact, the chance of that happening was nearly twice as likely at 1.8%.) But that happened, so I guess anything’s technically possible. The Iggles’ woefully dysfunctional offense makes the team look primed for a meltdown, but it would be so Cowboys if Philly left the door open for the NFC East title and Dallas lost to the Giants in Week 18.
I’m still not sure if the Cowboys’ middling record is evidence of them under- or overperforming expectations. Two things are certain: The offense is elite, but despite the midseason trade deadline improvement, the defense is the inverse equivalent to it. As frustrating as Sunday’s game was, the previous month made for some really fun football. The back-to-back takedowns of the two teams in last year’s Super Bowl — first against the hated Eagles, then a Thanksgiving Day comeback against the dynastic Kansas City Chiefs — was especially entertaining. Dallas just put themselves in too deep of a hole early in the year, leaving themselves no margin down the stretch.
Two things are the most disappointing. The first is that the rest of the league looks as beatable as it’s ever been. The NFC especially. If ever the competition level has laid an easier path to a conference championship, I don’t know of one. The other is they’ve wasted the best football of Dak Prescott’s career. It doesn’t really matter how many QB metrics in which No. 4 ranks around the top of the league when a terrible secondary and an even worse linebacking core consistently allow mediocre QBs career days against them. The haters will somehow still try to blame Dak for it. A Russell Wilson who was benched the following week, a first-overall bust in Bryce Young dragging a career QBR of 42.4 in with him, a career backup in Jacoby Brissett, and essentially a rookie in J.J. McCarthy boasting the worst completion percentage in the league — each of these guys looked like vintage Peyton Manning against Matt Eberflus’ bewilderingly blitz-vacant and zone-heavy scheme. Is Dak supposed to line up at corner on top of having to score on every drive?
So, that’s it. The 2025 season is donned with the proverbial bow. Now the questions are aimed at what happens next year. Some of those should already have been answered. Despite an irritating tendency to settle for field goals, head coach and play caller Brain Schottenheimer has proven he’s as good or better than Mike McCarthy running the offense. George Pickens should be retained, whether by extension or the tag. Trevon Diggs should be wearing a different uniform next year. And Brandon Aubrey should become the highest paid kicker in the history of the league. Beyond that, the front office must use their high-value draft capital to address the defensive side of the ball and supplement those selections with some actual free agency acquisitions.
As far as how I’m supposed to get my serotonin? Feelings are still raw from the Luka trade, and while the firing of the architect of that blunder, Nico Harrison, certainly helps and Cooper Flagg appears every bit as good as advertised, the Mavs are in a sort of limbo, a liminal space somewhere between borderline relevancy and a mandate to blow it all up and build an entirely new team around Flagg, so there’s little to glean there. The Stars are on a President’s Trophy-winning pace to begin the year, but I normally can’t switch my hockey brain fully on until at least after the Winter Classic. I am in a sort of liminal space, too. So, I suppose Little Debbies, here I come.
