Looking Back At The 2020 Cowboys Season
The 2020 Dallas Cowboys season was complicated. People remember the playoff loss to Green Bay, but they usually forget what came before it. The team went 12-4, won the division, and then lost a game that shouldn't have been as close as it was. Let me walk through what actually happened and why the whole thing still comes up in conversations years later. The offseason started with expectations. Dak Prescott was coming off a torn ACL, Ezekiel Elliott had contract drama, and Mike McCarthy was out as offensive coordinator. Jason Garrett took over play-calling duties again. On paper, this looked like a step backward for an offense that had been clicking in 2019. Instead, the Cowboys figured things out quickly. Dak threw for 4,081 yards and 30 touchdowns. Ezekiel Elliott rushed for over 1,000 yards. CeeDee Lamb won rookie of the year considerations after being drafted third overall. The offense averaged 28.3 points per game, which ranked third in the NFL. That is not something you build from scratch in a single season.
The defensive side was harder to pin down. Myles Garrett and Fred Warner were having MVP campaigns elsewhere in the league. Dallas relied on a front four that generated pressure without much help from blitzes. Leighton Vander Esch missed most of the year with a knee injury. DaRon Bland wasn't even on the roster yet. The secondary was patched together with veterans and practice squad call-ups, and it held up better than anyone expected. The Cowboys allowed 344.8 yards per game on defense, ranking around middle of the pack. Not great, not terrible. I spent a lot of time going back through game film from that season when I was doing some analysis for a podcast. What stands out is how much the Cowboys won with late-game execution. Several games against teams like Washington and the Giants were decided by scores of three to seven points. Dak's performance in the final two minutes of those games was the difference. He completed passes under pressure at a rate that surprised me when I tracked it. About 68% of his throws in those situations went for first downs or scores. That kind of efficiency doesn't show up in box scores unless you dig into it. The playoff run is where everything unraveled against the Packers. Aaron Rodgers had 415 passing yards and three touchdowns. The Cowboys' pass rush had zero sacks. This wasn't a fluke stat either. During the regular season, Dallas had generated pressure on 38% of dropbacks. In that game, they got home on just 12% of opportunities. The numbers from that game don't tell the whole story because the Cowboys were playing from behind most of the second half, which changes how defensive coordinators call their plays. But the raw numbers are still ugly.
There's a common misconception that the Cowboys played badly in that playoff game. They didn't. They got dominated in certain moments, but they also had chances. The offense moved the ball effectively in the first half. Dak was accurate. The running game had some success. What happened was that the Packers made more plays in critical situations. One third-down conversion in the fourth quarter that stayed alive instead of being a turnover on downs changed the entire trajectory. Those marginal plays add up over a full postseason. From a roster construction standpoint, the 2020 season revealed some structural issues. The Cowboys were thin at linebacker after Vander Esch went down. They addressed it the following offseason by signing Micah Parsons, which turned out to be one of the best moves in franchise history. But in 2020, they were stuck with Jaylon Smith playing through injury and a bunch of role players who couldn't fill the gap. That's the kind of detail people miss when they just look at the win-loss record. The team also had some notable injuries that season. Tyron Smith missed time. Amari Cooper dealt with a hip issue that limited him for several weeks. Michael Gallup was out with a knee injury for part of the year. Despite all of that, they still managed a 12-win season. That speaks to the depth and coaching, but it also means the ceiling was probably higher than what they showed on the field.
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If you're looking to study this season for any reason, I'd recommend focusing on the Week 5 game against the Seahawks. Dallas was down 17-3 at halftime and came back to win 31-17. Dak's decision-making in that second half was textbook. He took what the defense gave him. When Seattle blitzed, he checked into protection and adjusted. When they played soft coverage, he attacked the middle. It's a complete game from him and something worth watching if you want to understand what made that offense work. The offseason after was transformative in ways nobody could have predicted. The draft class brought in Parsons and Terrance Steele, who both started immediately. The coaching staff got an overhaul with Kellen Moore taking over as offensive coordinator. The Cowboys went 12-4 again in 2021 and made another playoff run. But the 2020 season laid the groundwork for that. It proved the core pieces were there and exposed the areas that needed fixing. Looking at it now, the 2020 Cowboys team was probably better than its playoff result suggests. The regular season performance was strong. The injuries were real. The playoff loss was narrow in terms of score but wide in terms of dominance when you look at the underlying metrics. It's a season that gets remembered for one bad game, but the body of work leading up to it was solid.
That's usually how NFL seasons go though. One game overshadows eleven others. The Cowboys fans know this. They've been through enough of it to understand that a 12-win season followed by a first-round exit is neither a disaster nor a triumph. It's just football.
