Why Your Team Sucks 2015: Dallas Cowboys

Some people are fans of the Dallas Cowboys. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Dallas Cowboys. This 2015 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: the Dallas Cowboys, official team of all Texas sugar daddies! Your 2014 record: 12-4. Play it… Hold onto the ball next time, fucko. Your coach: Jason Garrett. Holy shit, you went 12-4 with Princeton Boy! Well, THAT’S not happening again. Your quarterback: Tony Romo. OW MY BUTT The great thing about Tony Romo is that he can play perfectly efficient football and still have his team choke AROUND him. It’s all his fault. Keep in mind that Romo played a few games last season with a broken back because the Cowboys don’t give a shit. Join us this season when Jerry Jones personally administers all the team’s concussion protocol exams. What’s new that sucks: Greg Hardy! You signed Greg Hardy! Of course you did. After all, when you’re the Dallas Cowboys, it’s not as if your reputation can get any worse. You are already a nakedly greedy enterprise, branded to within an inch of your life, surrounded by fans whose only life goal is to be an extra in a Bud Light Lime ad. Watch any Cowboys game and you are in danger of seeing DISGUSTING men hugging each other like pigs: There were no values to be compromised here. Why not sign Greg Hardy? Why not sign Pol Pot himself? I expect nothing less. Anyway, in case you need a refresher on Greg Hardy, he was put in Goodell Jail for all but one game last season after he was found guilty of nearly strangling then-girlfriend Nicole Holder to death, throwing her onto a futon strewn with assault rifles, and beating her with a shoe. He also slammed a toilet lid on Holder’s arm, because when you are Greg Hardy, there’s no one way to abuse a woman. The only limits are your IMAGINATION. Let’s see what set off Hardy to begin with… Several witnesses spoke about Hardy accidentally knocking over a glass of champagne early in the evening and his personal assistant yelling “Party Foul!” for this faux pas. Did the assistant also make the L sign on his forehead when he cried out PARTY FOUL? Because then I can obviously see how that was the last straw. Anyway, Hardy was dumped by Carolina and issued a 10-game suspension for this season that got knocked down to four games because, at this point, Roger Goodell could make Charles Manson into a sympathetic figure. Hardy will make his debut in Week 5 against the Patriots, a game which will have more unlikable characters than a standard episode of Game of Thrones. In other news, DeMarco Murray signed with the Eagles after setting all kinds of Dallas team records. And who did the Cowboys bring in to fill the massive hole left by Spray Tan’s departure? Which longtime Jerry Jones wet dream did the Cowboys procure after years and years of open yearning? No, it wasn’t Adrian Peterson. Nope, you got Darren McFadden instead. If you have an old Lisfranc ligament that YOU would like to donate to Darren McFadden, please call the Cowboys front office at your earliest convenience. Once McFadden goes down, your RB platoon includes legendary underwear bandit Joseph Randle, who has ALSO been accusing of threatening a woman with a gun. The Cowboys will stick a Glock in your face and make off with all your cologne and there ain’t shit you can do about it. The team also handed Dez Bryant $45 million in guaranteed money this offseason, just in time for him to go directly into the tank. If we’re lucky, his mythical parking lot beatdown tape will finally emerge, because that would be the most Cowboys thing to happen. Already, Dez has been punched in joint practices and is currently at war with team-assigned mentor David Wells for skimming from his bank account, which the team essentially mandated Wells have access to. Hard to believe that the Cowboys would employ a shadowy fixer type! Here’s the money copy: Wells was rolling around town in a Navigator with vanity tags that said BAIL ME. Cash poured in but didn’t always go out: In 2008, Wells pleaded guilty to tax evasion to avoid doing time. According to Bryant’s legal team, Wells has been sued multiple times — for everything from fraud to unpaid debts and nonpayment of city taxes, with judgments exceeding $1 million. Remarkably, none of this troubled the Cowboys, who’ve retained him to run background checks on players. Over the phone, Wells claimed to have served the team as a “crisis-management expert” since the 1990s, when he assisted Irvin in completing his community-service hours after Irvin pleaded no contest to felony cocaine possession. Describing himself as the “black Ray Donovan,” he told me he’d worked closely with many fallen stars. I’m sure this will all be resolved in a smooth and discreet manner. Also: Orlando Scandrick’s knee died. And Rolando McClain has been suspended for the first four games of the season. Maybe he and Hardy can spend September honing their pistol-whipping technique. We’ll get Black Ray Donovan on it. What has always sucked: Everything. Just everything. Tell me you’re a Cowboys fan and I will INSTANTLY think less of you. I mean it. I just deflate upon hearing the news. Oh, you’re one of THEM. This a bloated and disgusting franchise cheered on by bloated, disgusting people. Chris Christie has no chance to become President SPECIFICALLY because he’s a bandwagoning fat fuck who likes this team. The owner is a lunatic and a serial groper. The coach is a tactical moron. Half the roster assaulted your girlfriend. And I still believe, with all my heart, that Jerry Jones paid someone off to get that fucking flag picked up. He built a billion-dollar food court and the NFL secretly rewarded him with an extra life for it. It happened. I will find proof. As for Dallas, it remains our worst major city—a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse fashioned into an entire metropolis. Dallas is Ebola, unofficial segregation, strip club ribeyes, highway ramps, bank buildings, and asshole country clubs. I’ve been to Dallas three times in the past calendar year and I swear I wish I had been sent to literally any other city instead. Why couldn’t I have gone to Kansas City? That would have been nice. But no, instead I got three trips to the world’s largest construction zone. This town got a good president killed and took a bad president in after he started two goddamn wars. The only good place to eat is at a gas station. There’s a megachurch on every corner and the head of every single one has been convicted of evading taxes. Dallas blows. I hope Jerryworld falls into a sinkhole. What might not suck: The team lucked into draft-day discounts on both Randy Gregory AND La’el Collins, which means they are now stacked on both lines. Being the NFL’s most soulless franchise has its fringe benefits. Hear it from Cowboys fans! Adam: Jerry Jones can buy the NFL’s Head of Officiating a lap dance and we still can’t define the Dez catch as a catch. Doug: We were beat by Colt McCoy in 2014. Jeremy: I live and work in the DC area. Up until a few months ago I had four Cowboys fans in my office. Not one of them had ever been to Texas other than for a layover. Patrick: You KNOW someone could write the exact same book about Jerry Jones that Holly Madison wrote about Hef. Richard: If I hear “How bout dem Cowboys!” one more time at JerryWorld this year, I’m going to do more blow than Irvin did at the U. Lynda: Our best running back is going to be the dude who probably shit himself in a Dillard’s. Alvin: This is the only fanbase that confuses pragmatism for not being a real fucking fan. Ben: Did you know that Tony Romo is 2nd in passer rating? Not for 2014, but for all quarterbacks, in the history of the league? Jerry wanted to draft Johnny Idiotface Manziel last year and had to be restrained by his son from doing so. Jerry Jones must have been bullied by the safeties on his team at Arkansas because he operates as though the position literally does not exist. Brandon: One time at a Cowboys game, a guy spilled beer on me. Before I could turn around and glare menacingly at him, he patted me on the shoulder, and in his heartiest redneck accent stated “I’m sorry brother. I just got too excited. I say if you’re at a game and don’t spill any beer, you just ain’t doin it right! Am I right?” Sadly, I think I trust that guy more than I do Jerry Jones. Steve: This fucking guy. Lisa (Australian): I’m headed to the U.S for the first time, flying into DFW. Finally, I think to myself, a place where my shitty Cowboy affiliation won’t make me a target. As I’m going through airport security in Dallas, the asshole security official looks at me as though he can see eight balls of meth spilling out of my pockets and asks me, “Why are you in Dallas?” I excitedly tell him that I’m a Cowboys fan and he replies that he is too. I explain that even though it’s offseason I’m going to check out Arlington. He looks at me with MORE suspicion. “But you’re Australian.” “Well, they show some NFL on TV back home so…” “So you’re a Cowboys fan?” “Yeah..” “From Australia?” “Yeah..” Silence. At this point I’m positive he’s going to call over those terrifying guards with those enormous automatic guns that I’ve never seen in real life because I’m Australian and we have responsible gun laws. But he finally hands me back my passport and waves me through (to the extra screening line, mind you) with a shake of his head and a healthy “pfffft” of disgust. I got dissed for being a Dallas fan, BY a Dallas fan, IN Dallas. Fuck the Cowboys, fuck the city of Dallas and fuck their entire fan base with fragments of that enormous goddamn screen when some adventurous kicker finally hits it hard enough to break it into a million, razor sharp pieces. Chad: I think Jerry signed Darren McFadden to help Sean Lee feel tough. When McFadden shatters his glass feet running out of bounds with no contact in week 1, Sean Lee won’t feel bad about leaving a void in the defense when he goes down with turf toe in Week 3 and misses the rest of the year. Jesse: After one hundred 8-8 seasons we finally break free with a fantastic running game that makes our defense look decent and makes Romo look almost elite. Within 3 months we have let DeMarco walk without even a fight and our current starting RB prospects are an underwear thief and someone who wasn’t good enough to get carries for the Raiders. Also we employ several legitimate criminals. Every Cowboys offseason is like some sick test of our morality where I have to decide if I’m a terrible person if I don’t denounce them and buy a Jaguars jersey as penance. Jose: When the Packers beat the Cowboys (Dez may or may not have caught the ball), I lost a good friend because he decided to punch me, in the face, while I was drinking my Shiner beer. He still calls or texts me trying to explain his reasoning for why he punched me. Here’s a recent one that I didn’t ignore: “Look man, I’m sorry about hitting you. I let the things Jerry Jones has done over the years get to me. It’s his fault I’m angry and upset. I let those emotions mix and it turned into an outburst.” Andrew: I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan, which means I go from “please feel sorry for me!” to “better than you!” in about 6 seconds. I’ll start the conversation by apologizing for my weak fandom choices, and then end it with threatening to belt your five year old sister in the mouth with a brick for questioning Dez Bryant’s off the field reputation. Our 5’6 slot receiver records a slam dunk on a lowered hoop on vine and we take that as a sign that he should start over guys almost a foot taller and 60 pounds heavier than him. Despite the fact that Tony Romo leads in nearly every 4th quarter stat known to man, we still have dumbfuck fans who call for his head every time Sean Lee’s legs fall off. TG: I took my Dad to a game a few years ago. The stadium was so quiet and lifeless the only thing you could hear was the sound of my Dad’s camera phone blatantly snapping photos of the cheerleaders. Everyone around us was appalled. This was somehow less embarrassing than what was happening on the field. Trini: Ben: We suck because every asshole Cowboys fan who hasn’t even set foot in the city loves to tell me that Dez caught it. No he fucking didn’t. The rule says you go to the ground in control of the ball. Everybody watched Calvin Johnson. We know that’s a rule. We all hate the rule, but we know it exists. The sheer amount of hubris it takes from fans to still insist that Dez was shafted by one rule, yet defend the fact that we got away with a referee actually picking up a flag with ZERO explanation? Even Walter White would have trouble with those mental gymnastics. Oh and we suck because we’ll always find a way to keep it close if not lose at both games to the Redskins, even if they start some backup at QB that Alabama once turned into a pink mist on the field. There is no doubt in my mind that the Cowboys will win a bunch of games next year, and then when finally faced with an opponent that’s not a wild card reject, they will shit the bed again in the playoffs, and everyone around the country will drink up the tears of the fan-base like a fine wine. Because that’s what should happen when your Quarterback is the equivalent of Mark Richt, the aw shucks guy with supposedly all the talent that constantly finds a way to fuck it up when it matters most. Brad: Darren McFadden is like one of those light cycles from Tron- he can move fairly quickly, but only in straight lines and if anyone touches him, he disintegrates. Submissions for the 2015 NFL previews are now closed. Next up: the Denver Broncos.