Cowboys can join ’80, ’81 clubs with this rare distinction; playoff success not guaranteed
Mike McCarthy preaches the importance of winning home games. All of them. The Cowboys head coach has repeatedly said that if a team can win all of its home contests and at least split the road dates, they’ll generally be sitting in at least decent shape for the postseason.
But even just the first part of that equation is far more difficult than it sounds. In the 62 full regular seasons that the Cowboys franchise has been in existence, only two of those clubs have put together a perfect home slate. The 2023 edition has the chance to accomplish that feat on Saturday night when they host the Detroit Lions in the regular-season home finale.
While notching a win over the surging Lions would be exceedingly important from a morale standpoint in that it would snap a troubling two-game skid (both away games), going undefeated at AT&T Stadium would be nice icing on the year’s playoff-berth cake.
An unblemished home record, though, doesn’t seem to have much bearing on deep postseason success, especially if the team has to travel in the tournament. At least that’s the lesson the 1980 and 1981 Cowboys have to teach us.
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1980: 8-0 at home, 2-1 in playoffs
The 1980 Cowboys probably could have been excused for laying a giant egg, yet they turned in their first-ever perfect home slate.
Roger Staubach had retired in the offseason, leaving the offense in the hands of Danny White. But the franchise had been to five Super Bowls during the 1970s, and the roster that had gone as far as the divisional round of the postseason the year prior was still mostly otherwise intact.
In their eight wins at Texas Stadium, the 1980 crew- the highest-scoring offense in the league that year- outscored their opponents 284 to 130, with an average margin of victory of over 19 points. Along the way, they hung a pair of fiftyburgers and held two opponents to single digits.
The NFC’s playoff seeding came down to the last weekend of the regular season, with Dallas needing to beat Philadelphia by 25 points or more to win the East. Though the Cowboys held an advantage of exactly that many in the fourth quarter of the 1980 finale, the Eagles scored 17 unanswered points in a furious comeback that fell just short but won them the division crown.
As the conference’s wild card, the 12-4 Cowboys won their opening-round game handily with a big home win over the Rams. The following week in Atlanta, they staged a massive rally of their own, with White leading the offense to 20 fourth-quarter points and a thrilling 30-27 win in what’s still considered one of the most fantastic finishes in NFL history.
The offense ran out of steam with that win, though. The NFC Championship saw them manage barely 200 total yards and just a single score, and they lost to the Eagles 20-7 on a bitterly cold and mistake-filled day in Philadelphia.
That game, the first postseason meeting ever for the two rivals, also famously marked the last time the Cowboys wore their supposedly “cursed” royal blue jerseys. The Eagles had elected to wear white at home to force the wardrobe choice; Dallas debuted a new navy blue set the following season.
1981: 8-0 at home, 1-1 in playoffs
The 1981 season saw the Cowboys once again go undefeated at home, though the numbers were more pedestrian. They averaged just over 23 points per game in those eight wins, down from 35.5 the year prior. The offense hit 30 points only once at Texas Stadium all season and won two of their home dates by a single point.
The offensive downshift was indeed noticeable on the field. In a telling stat, Cowboys kicker Rafael Septein led the NFL in field goals made; in 1980, he had been tops in PATs.
The Dallas defense, though, saw an uptick in at least one category with the arrival of rookie defensive back Everson Walls. The undrafted Grambling product led the league in interceptions, nabbing 11 of them that season.
Despite being less of a juggernaut overall, the Cowboys won the East with another 12-4 mark and rolled over Tampa Bay in the divisional round of the postseason. Their 38-0 shellacking of the Bucs- at Texas Stadium- extended their home win streak to 18 games, including playoffs.
The win put Dallas in the NFC Championship for the second straight year and the fourth time in five seasons. At San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, Joe Montana and Dwight Clark ended the Cowboys’ Super Bowl dreams with “The Catch” in a game that many forget the Cowboys still nearly won.
Dallas would drop their next home outing, the 1982 season opener versus Pittsburgh.
2023: 7-0 at home... so far
Home cooking has been good for the Cowboys in 2023, with 15 consecutive victories at AT&T Stadium dating back to last September. It’s the second-longest home win streak in club history.
Over this season’s seven wins in their own building, Dallas has scored 279 points, for an absurd per-game average of 39.8 points. They haven’t put up fewer than 30 at home this season and are beating visitors by an average margin of 24.4 points.
While the team has a postseason berth locked up, getting a home playoff date is a mathematical long shot. It is more likely they’ll have to travel for every tournament draw they get, and the Cowboys have proven to be a very different team on the road this year.
Dallas currently has just a 3-5 record as visitors. With only one more away date to play in the regular season, they’ll finish with more road losses than wins. Apart from their 40-0 statement victory at MetLife Stadium in Week 1 (which now stands out as the clear anomaly), the Cowboys are averaging just 22 points per road contest and giving up nearly 30.
While the Cowboys would obviously love to carry a perfect home sweep into the playoffs, they need only look to the franchise’s history books to see that it doesn’t translate to overwhelming postseason success. Although Cowboys fans wouldn’t complain about another trip to the conference title game…
