Cowboys are still just a big tease unless they can upset the 49ers | Opinion
There’s a good reason why Ezekiel Elliott has no memory of the last time the Dallas Cowboys went on a serious Super Bowl run.
He was in diapers.
Yeah, it has been a minute.
Elliott, the bruising, 27-year-old running back, was born in the summer of 1995 – which also happened to be the year that the so-called “America’s Team” put together a championship season that culminated with a Super Bowl XXX crown.
He’s heard all about the postseason misfortune that has afflicted the Cowboys over many years since. Until Monday night, when they smashed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to advance to an NFC divisional playoff game at San Francisco on Sunday, the Cowboys had won just four playoff games since that last Super Bowl campaign.
“What happened before us, it doesn’t matter,” Elliott told USA TODAY Sports. “I look at what’s happened since we’ve been here. This is the second playoff game we’ve won since I’ve been here. It feels good. I’m just ready to make a run. All that matters is what we do now.”
The beatdown of Tom Brady on Monday night fuels hope. Dak Prescott played the game of his life, accounting for five TDs the week after arguably the worst game of his career. And one more win would put Dallas (13-5) in the NFC title game for the first time since the 1995 season.
The confidence was thick in the visiting locker room at Raymond James Stadium on Monday night, when the Cowboys won the franchise’s first road playoff game in 30 years.
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“Michael Irvin came right up at the end of the game and he was talking about the teams he played for,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said, wistfully recalling the three Super Bowl victories in four years that the Hall of Fame receiver was part of. “He used the analogy of the dog. He said when they put the dog in the hunt, once they’ve tasted that, then they come back.
“So that’s what you’ve done here. These guys will never be the same … So this one will definitely lift this team’s capability of playing good against San Francisco.”
Leave it to the loquacious optimist (Jones) to sell it for all it's worth.
'America's Biggest Tease'?
But remember: These are the Cowboys. For so many years, with Jones beating the drums of hype and hope, “America’s Team” has been “America’s Biggest Tease.”
At least this current version of the Cowboys, even with some Jekyll and Hyde tendencies, has a chance to create its own history. Yet it’s so fitting that to truly arrive, Dallas must not only upset a 49ers team (14-4) with an NFL-longest 11-game winning streak, but also score a historical victory in what will be the next installment of one of the league’s greatest playoff rivalries.
Dallas vs. San Francisco gave us this: Joe Montana connecting with Dwight Clark for “The Catch” during the 1980s that propelled the 49ers to their first taste of Super Bowl glory. Roger Staubach’s last-minute heroics as part of three consecutive years the Cowboys eliminated the 49ers from the playoffs during the 1970s. Three straight matchups in the NFC Championship Game during the 1990s (Dallas 2, San Francisco 1) that morphed into a de facto Super Bowl series.
And last year, the 49ers went to JerryWorld and eliminated Dallas, with clock-bungling at the finish preventing Prescott from throwing up a final pass into the end zone after the Cowboys frantically drove into scoring range.
Prescott said earlier this week that the playoff setback last year will hurt for “the rest of my career” and provide motivation to better handle time-saving techniques in crunch time (which also falls on coach Mike McCarthy and coordinator Kellen Moore). Yet he also sees a chance at redemption, a theme that played out in knocking off a Bucs team that won the past two season openers against Dallas.
Still, the reasons why Dallas will be so challenged to redeem itself on Sunday have piled up. The 49ers bring the NFL’s top-ranked defense. Rookie quarterback Brock Purdy has been the NFL’s biggest surprise, efficiently getting the ball into the hands of playmakers like Deebo Samuel, Christian McCaffrey and George Kittle. And as Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy sees it, the Cowboys are further disadvantaged in having to play another road game after playing on the road Monday – while the 49ers had two extra days of rest and preparation, and no travel, after opening the playoffs at home on Saturday. That amounts to a 52-hour difference in rest and prep.
McCarthy knows. “TV is king,” the coach told reporters, mindful that the short week comes after the Cowboys-Bucs game drew 30 million viewers on ABC and ESPN. “We’ll have less sleep,” McCarthy said, “and we’ll be grumpy.”
While Elliott, Prescott and other players don’t have any recollection, Jones certainly remembers another time the Cowboys went to San Francisco for a playoff game and were given little chance to win. It was the 1992 NFC title game. The young Cowboys were widely cast as being a year away.
Instead, the Cowboys used a 30-20 victory to signal a changing of the guard in the NFC, the springboard to all of the Super Bowl glory that made them the Team of the ‘90s.
“The streaking (Alvin) Harper in San Francisco,” Jones recalled, referring to a 70-yard catch-and-run off a slant route by Harper late in the fourth quarter that set up the game-clinching touchdown.
On that day at Candlestick Park, the Cowboys arrived early and made a statement. Does this group have it in them to do likewise?
Jones insists that the win at Tampa allowed the Cowboys to believe, “It can happen to you. So I expect tangible evidence of it when we play San Francisco this week.”
Elliott, meanwhile, senses the fire that was lit after Dallas closed the regular season with a dismal loss at Washington.
“I don’t know if that was because of what happened last week or just because it is the playoffs, but you could look in the eyes of the team the whole week,” Elliott said. “Guys were just ready to go.”
Now let’s see if they can do it again. After all, the dog is in the hunt.
Follow USA TODAY Sports' Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cowboys are still just a big tease unless they can upset 49ers
