The Dallas Cowboys are no strangers to absurdities. Some may argue it’s something the franchise openly welcomes, stemming from the very top of the organization.
Even by Cowboys standards, though, the 2024 season was a doozy. From the offseason to the regular season, from on the field and off, let’s look at what made this year one of the wildest roller-coaster rides in recent history.
The beginning
We’re going to start the timeline after the preposterous postseason blowout last January at the hands of the Green Bay Packers — perhaps the worst playoff loss in franchise history. The Cowboys wasted no time capturing headlines after that. Team owner and general manager Jerry Jones said at the Senior Bowl in late January last year that the urgency in the upcoming season would be high. In fact, it would be so high that the team would be “all in.”
“We will be going all in,” Jones said. “We’ve seen some things out of some of the players that we want to be all in on. Yes, I would say that you will see us this coming year not building for the future. It’s the best way I’ve ever said. And that ought to answer a lot of questions.”
In the months ahead, Jones’ actions only created more questions. The Cowboys have routinely been a bystander in free agency — even more so in 2024. Even the in-house contracts that felt like an inevitability dragged on, handcuffing the Cowboys’ cap situation. The mantra Jones put forth for the 2024 campaign went on to become an easy target for ridicule.
Jaire Alexander and the Packers had their way with the Cowboys during the wild-card round last season at AT&T Stadium. (Mark Hoffman / Imagn Images)
The big contracts
Micah Parsons made it clear he was content waiting until the 2025 offseason for his big contract extension. Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb were the first orders of business. Given Prescott’s monstrous cap hit for 2024 and his status as MVP runner-up in 2023, an extension felt inevitable … until it didn’t happen. Prescott was left answering questions about it at his charity initiatives, Jones fielded questions throughout the offseason and training camp. It felt like Jones’ definition of “all in” may have included watching Prescott take it to the next level in a contract year. But the Cowboys signed Prescott on the morning of their first regular-season game, with Prescott getting top dollar and all of the contract protections he was seeking. The delay in the agreement served nothing more than holding the Cowboys’ salary cap hostage.
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The Lamb contract felt even more inevitable. There were no questions with Lamb. He had proven to be an elite NFL wide receiver and had progressively gotten better in each of his four years. Still, the Cowboys dragged it out, enduring Lamb’s absence throughout the offseason program and entire training camp. During that time, Jones set off a Cold War with Lamb by saying there was no “urgency” to get the deal done, even though the Cowboys were weeks into training camp without the star wide receiver being with the team.
Eventually, both deals got done, but the Cowboys paid the price for delaying the process. They lost the stare-down with each player, with neither deal coming at a discount. They didn’t have the cap space in free agency. Prescott and Lamb were out of sync for a big portion of the start of the season. As much as Jones likes to tout the deals getting done, the process of getting there was as messy as it could get.
Jerry Jones made plenty of headlines during the 2024 season. (Tim Heitman / Imagn Images)
The off-field storylines
We mentioned the momentary rift between Jones and Lamb in training camp, but that wasn’t even close to the Cowboys’ top off-the-field distractions. It started when the State of the Union news conference to begin training camp had to be moved back because Jones was required to be in court for his paternity case.
From there, it was one thing after another. Perhaps the climax of it all came in a two-week span in October. After the Cowboys lost 47-9 at home to the Detroit Lions to enter their bye week, Jones had a startling confrontation with hosts during one of his weekly radio shows on 105.3 The Fan. Jones uncharacteristically lashed out at some basic questions, even threatening the jobs of the hosts on the Cowboys’ flagship station. The next week, ESPN released a story on the tours that take place at the team’s practice facility in Frisco. Although it’s a practice that’s gone on since the inception of The Star in 2016, it reinvigorated dialogue about the Cowboys’ priorities and the existence of distractions. The team struggling on the field at the time added fuel to the fire and it became an easy, albeit misguided, target.
Plenty of other storylines popped up nearly on a weekly basis. In the days after the facility tours story, Trevon Diggs, in full uniform, confronted a reporter outside of locker room about a post on X. The following week, veteran running back Ezekiel Elliott, whose ineffectiveness on the field was shielded by his leadership in the running back room, was suspended for a game due to being late to team meetings. The week after that, Jones, unprompted, poured gasoline on the conversation about curtains and the sun at AT&T Stadium after it was an issue during a blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. After that same game, Parsons came under fire for making comments that appeared like a slight toward McCarthy.
The Cowboys didn’t stack up too many wins, but there were no shortage of things to discuss.
Approach to personnel decisions
The aforementioned off-field distractions are nothing new and shouldn’t be pointed to as the main reason the Cowboys had a 7-10 season. Most, if not all, of those factors were around — one way or another — even when the team was rolling off winning seasons.
The crux of the Cowboys’ struggles was their football operations. There are the aforementioned contract situations of Prescott and Lamb and the “all in” comment that had no substance. Let’s stay with the latter for a moment. The Cowboys let their 2023 top running back Tony Pollard walk in free agency and made no effort to replace him. Derrick Henry has a residence in Dallas but didn’t get a call from Dallas. Saquon Barkley was deemed too expensive. The Cowboys signed Elliott, who had nothing left in the tank, and veteran Royce Freeman. They didn’t select a running back in the draft.
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Nothing was done to boost the interior defensive line, either. The strategy for improvement there was hope that 2023 first-round pick Mazi Smith would progress. Hope was also the strategy deployed with the offensive skill group: that the second year of Brandin Cooks’ adjustment to Dallas would be smoother than the first, Jalen Tolbert would make a jump and Jake Ferguson would continue to ascend. None of that worked out to the extent it needed to.
For the cherry on top, the Cowboys traded a fourth-round pick for Jonathan Mingo in the middle of a lost season. The Mingo trade was done with 2025 and 2026 in mind, and he never got to play with Prescott, so the transaction deserves patience, but it hasn’t gotten off to a glowing start.
Injuries
It’s the one thing that went wrong in a major way that was out of the Cowboys’ control. It wasn’t just that they had a lot of players get hurt; it’s that they were significant players, and often multiple players at the same position. Sam Williams was lost for the season in training camp with a torn ACL. Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence went down in Week 4. Lawrence never returned while Parsons missed four games. The following week, Marshawn Kneeland went down and the Cowboys were without their top four defensive ends.
DaRon Bland’s injury happened at camp and he missed the start of the season. A setback in his recovery kept him out even longer. When he did return, Diggs missed a couple of games due to an injury. Diggs came back for one game before being shut down for the season. The Cowboys’ replacement options at cornerback featured Josh Butler, Caelen Carson and Amani Oruwariye. All three had their season end prematurely on injured reserve.
DeMarvion Overshown was playing at a very high level when he was injured in Week 14 against the Bengals. (Kevin Jairaj / Imagn Images)
Prescott and linebacker DeMarvion Overshown were arguably the two most devastating injuries. Prescott was lost for the season when the team sunk to 3-5. Overshown’s injury was a gut punch; he was the team’s best defensive player, and emotional motor. He was lost to a knee injury so significant that it will leak into his 2025 season.
There were a number of other injuries, too. Lamb played through a shoulder injury the last eight games he played before being shut down after the Cowboys were eliminated from the playoffs. Ferguson missed time with a concussion. Eric Kendricks dealt with a nagging issue. Zack Martin’s season ended with a collection of ailments, including both ankles. Rookie Tyler Guyton nursed an injury throughout the season. Key special teams contributor Markquese Bell was lost early, too.
Ineffective play
The Cowboys’ failures this season weren’t just a product of circumstances; it was also their own doing. Prescott’s injury was a tough blow, but he played in eight games before going down, and he was not playing well. Lamb wasn’t his usual self for the first portion of the season. Ferguson showed great promise in 2023 but wasn’t able to follow that up consistently.
The biggest place of ineffectiveness was the running game for the majority of the season. The personnel decisions contributed to that greatly but so did the management of the situation and play on the field. The coaching staff stuck with a committee approach far too long, even after it was clear that Rico Dowdle was a cut above the rest. The offensive line was another shortcoming. Martin was largely impacted by injuries but Guyton was not good, even aside from his injury issues, and Terence Steele was up-and-down.
The defense had major struggles but it’s difficult to pinpoint just how much was based on effectiveness. Injuries derailed the unit from the start, and it was already adjusting to a new scheme with Mike Zimmer.
In good news, the Cowboys do employ Brandon Aubrey.
(Top photo of Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
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