None of us had a hard time seeing this one coming.
Our playlet begins as it always does …
It starts with “Jerry is really mad this time” as the townsfolk scurry and fan themselves with shock because the great king and owner of the entire land, King Jerry Jones, was seen to be red-faced with rage after his hand-appointed charges allowed another defeat in front of him a few weeks back.
The entire kingdom is in a fit of unrest, awaiting the next public execution in the town square. You do not anger the great king and live to tell about it.
They will pay dearly! They have let down their great king! Look how angry he appears this time!
Then, off in the distance, comes a new prince on a white horse to save us. Is it Earl Thomas, Matthew Stafford or perhaps Jamal Adams? Maybe it is Bill Cowher, Jon Gruden, Bob Stoops or even George Seifert? Could Norv Turner be the one? I have heard Jimmy Johnson and Troy Aikman might be called in by the great king!
No, this time, our savior appears to be our long-lost son who traveled to New Orleans to build up a kingdom of his own, once upon a time, the likes of such have never been witnessed down by the great sea. Behold, Sean Payton has returned to revive this once great city to what our ancestors enjoyed and told us about during campfires. The Cowboys shall rise again and Sir Payton knows the path!
Hurrah! Hurrah! A great feast awaits!
… and scene.
This is where we are in the story. Everyone gets their fair chance to fix what is broken. And if playoff game No. 1 does not go well, off with his head and let’s get the next guy in here. Obviously, patience has its limits at roughly one playoff game.
Then, we commence talking ourselves into the next savior. It is how it works around here. People will try to tell you this is sports, but it actually isn’t in many places. Very few franchises work this way, to be fair. But, there are a few that do. And then there are those at the top of this list that almost know no other way.
This is why the Lakers, Yankees and Cowboys work the way they do (shout-out to all of the good folks I talk to daily online who claim to be enthusiasts of all three. That seems completely normal and well-adjusted). They are a national drama with daily rumors and storylines as one example where having all of the money on the planet does not erase all of your bad days. Perhaps to the populace, seeing money cannot buy you happiness is what fuels the fascination of it all. How can they have all of that money and all of the trappings that come with it and still lose? Why don’t they just get all of the players and conquer the world? We thought money was the solution to every rainy day, but how can you spend 25 years in the wilderness? This is shattering our myths.
People like seeing the Cowboys lose. And when they do, they like to rush to the owner and see if he is mad. If so, how mad is he? Is he madder than last time or the time before that? Is he mad enough to take responsibility or just to blame the next guy who comes along on the conveyor belt of solutions?
It just comes with the dinner around here. You want to work on the big stage and you want to be the guy to trigger the parade that one of the biggest fan bases has waited for so long to have that there are children of Cowboys fans who have now had their own children without seeing the title won. They continue to believe their great king will not rest until he gets them what they wait for, but it is clear for all involved that the anxiety levels have never been higher.
Mike McCarthy thought he knew this when he arrived. He took over a franchise with history in his previous spot, so he probably convinced himself that it would all be similar. If he did, we might blame him for thinking that one franchise with no owner and the other franchise with the most visible owner in the world would be similar at all just because they both have trophy rooms that are well-populated.
He was in a demanding place with high expectations in Green Bay, but in the end, it is a nurturing fan base with a reasonably compliant media that clearly wants more and pouts when they don’t get it, but there is an underlying appreciation and gratitude deep in their souls that they cannot believe the 68th-largest media market gets to have a league power. It is different when you see things as “we are lucky just to have a franchise as the last unchanged entity in a fast-changing universe.” In general, those who remember a life before Brett Favre in Green Bay have few delusions of their normal place in this world.
Not here. You come here for one reason and one reason only. You play for the richest franchise that is owned by the richest owner and play in the richest stadium. And doggone it, those are the standards.
What is the point to all of this?
Sean Payton is on the radar now and will be the theme of this next year of Dallas Cowboys football. Of course, he is. Nobody has used the Cowboys to assist his career leverage quite like Payton since leaving here and instantly providing an identity and stability to one of the formerly silliest franchises in the league. What Payton did in New Orleans was magnificent and put him in the mix for a return to Dallas more than a decade ago.
And ever since, anytime the great king became upset with his coaching staff (virtually every year) the conversation shifted to: “If someone had everything, who would they want to coach the Dallas Cowboys?” and Payton became the answer. That is when it wasn’t Bob Stoops or Jon Gruden or Bill Cowher or you name the guy. Then, most of those guys would say that they would not wish to work in Dallas where they know they would probably not have the “full control” that they get when they take a job.
Do you think Stoops or Gruden or Bill Belichick or Bill Parcells ever had to ask permission elsewhere to change running backs or coordinators? Do you think they ever saw a fight that they didn’t even try to win because they knew how it would go and perhaps someone else had the owner’s ear anyway and you might be on the losing end of a power struggle if you pushed too far?
Payton has always been the answer to the hypotheticals and he probably thought it would be great to be the coach in Dallas one day. He also probably knew that the Saints weren’t letting him get away and that his best bet would be to allow the Cowboys’ rumors to simmer, but also to let his current ownership family think he always had bigger options available. The Cowboys were an amazing source of leverage for him with the Benson family in New Orleans because we know that rich families do not like losing bidding wars to richer families.
So, every couple of years, the Cowboys would stir the pot and Payton would get another nice deal without moving gigs. The Cowboys were dead serious, but they could never figure it out. This week, a big story came out that they thought they might have had him after the 2018 season, but it got away and Payton signed his new deal. The Cowboys “settled” for a coach who was never in their rumor mill or likely in their hearts in McCarthy.
In the end, that is probably what much of this comes down to. Is Payton an objectively more accomplished coach than McCarthy? He is not. I have heard many twist and contort it to try to make his one Super Bowl more impressive than McCarthy’s, but in the end, they both know in their hearts that they expected several wins when they won their title. Side by side, they both have the same number of titles, division titles and nearly the same win percentages.
