The Dallas Cowboys keep rewriting the book of playoff incompetence

Give them credit: America's Team consistently find interesting ways to come up short in the postseason as their Super Bowl drought continues

For the second straight year, the Dallas Cowboys' season ended at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers after a botched final play. In 2022, Dak Prescott futilely ran out the clock rather than try a Hail Mary. This time around, their attempt to reach their first NFC Championship Game since 1995 ended in a blown trick play during which they couldn't even get a lateral off. The 49ers beat the Cowboys 19-12 and there are already calls for Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy's job.

Would firing McCarthy be an overreaction? Possibly. However, this was Dallas's seventh straight loss in the divisional round (and that's before we get to the defeats in the wildcard round) and Cowboys fans have legitimate reasons to believe that the most valuable franchise in sports has established itself as a perennial underachiever. While McCarthy isn't responsible for the vast majority of those playoff losses, he hasn't exactly turned the ship around either.