The Ringer NFL Show - Cowboys Time Travel Island

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Welcome to ‘The Island’! Each week a guest tries to persuade Nora Princiotti to agree with an argument they feel strongly about. This week’s guest is USA Today’s Jori Epstein, who takes us��to Cowboys Time Travel Island and pitches Nora on why Dallas has constantly ended up in an injury conundrum. Will Nora join her on the island, or sail elsewhere? Host: Nora Princiotti Guest: Jori Epstein Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone. This is Chris Ryan from The Ringer. As many of you have heard by now, we lost a treasured colleague and friend over the weekend. Jonathan Charks passed away on Saturday. John was 34. He leaves behind a wife and a son, and we are obviously mourning his loss and sending all of our love to his family right now. If you go to the ringer.com slash Jonathan Charks, that's J-O-N-A-T-J-A-R-K-S. You will find a memorial page for John, which has links to his GoFundMe that benefits his family. family, and the amazing writing he did throughout his experience. I encourage you to go there, and if you can, please support the Charks family. Briefly, I will just say that John was among the

first people that we hired to work for The Ringer, so he was instrumental in defining the voice and perspective of the site. He has as much to do with what this place is as anyone else. And throughout his experience with Cancer, John communicated eloquently about the challenges he was facing, both through his writing and his podcasting. You could never stop John from talking about his passions. It's one of the things I loved about him. Over the last few months, you know, whenever we would talk, whenever I would reach out to see how he was doing, I would try to keep it very John focused. And the next thing I knew we would be talking about James Hardin or Better Call Saul. He really loved this stuff. He loved talking about it, celebrating it, debating it,

illuminating it. We're going to keep putting out our pods and writing while we grieve. But we wanted to let folks know that John was in our hearts and that his family was in our thoughts. Thanks for listening. Hello, I'm Nora Princiotti and welcome to the island. This week, my guest is the wonderful Jory Epstein of USA Today, who is calling in from Dallas, I believe, to give us some excellent new perspective on the Cowboys after their disappointing week one loss and injury to Dak Prescott. Jory, welcome to the island. Glad to be here, Nora. Any excuse to hang out with you? I'll take it. um, Dory, I have to like, I'm just going to reveal private information between the two of us, if that's okay. But you said, yeah, you know, that's just probably what was part for the course here.

I asked you to do this because you are an incredible Cowboys reporter among your coverage of all sorts of NFL teams. And I think I was asking you like not long after we're hearing about Dak Prescott's thumb. And the first thing you said to me was something like, I think of the island. Island is like survivor. So you'd think that thumbs would be important or opposable thumbs would be important. And it was just too good. I wanted our listeners to know about this. Yes. Again, we're not making light of injury over here. But like, when you think about the human advantages in survival, opposable thumbs were key in our evolution. And if you're down to 50% of them, that just seems like a little bit rough for the island. Yeah, it's not great. It's not great. It's not great for the island. It's not

great for the Cowboys. So just a reminder of how this is going to work, Jory is going to give us her take on the Cowboys. And then in a lickety split 30 minutes, we are going to break it down from every angle before I'm going to decide if I agree and if I want to join her on her island, which I feel like I'm going to want to join you on your island, Joey.

Going to an island with you sounds great. Ailer alert. But I guess we're going to have to find out. So Jory, tell us what island are you on that is going to change how we feel about what's happening in Dallas right now. Absolutely, Nora. I'm Jory Epstein, and I am on Cowboys Time Travel Island. Think of the island like a record, spinning on a turntable.

Only now, that record is skipping. Ooh, this is like lost. It's very trippy. Okay, so talk me through what all that means. You bet. So I'm here in Dallas. Sunday, Dak Prescott leaves the game. He can't grip the ball.

Jerry Jones tells us after the game. I'm like, yeah, he needs surgery, which he underwent yesterday, Monday, on that thumb. And by Tuesday, they're saying, he's actually not going on IR because he could be back in under four weeks. And we're like, Jerry, are you crazy? But I think we need to time travel to understand that because I think this decision to not place him on AR started six years ago. Six years ago. Okay. That's the island of one.

Keep going. I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by the island. Six years ago, 2016, the year Dak Prescott joined the Cowboys in the first place. Excellent math by Nora Pinciotti and her education. But yes. And it's funny because I think this, but it started with something Jerry told me. So I'm at the game on Sunday.

We're all talking to Jerry out of the locker room. And then Jerry starts walking away. The cameras and reporters are going into the locker room. And I'm like, wait, I feel like I need a little bit more on Cooper Rush, who's now going to be the starting quarterback for the Cowboys, for at least a few weeks. And so I run after Jerry, and I'm like, Jerry, I don't think we asked you enough about Cooper Rush

and what he can offer this team. Like, what do you want fans to know about Cooper? And I'm expecting, like, classic Cooper knows the system. He's been here since 2017. We believe in Cooper next Nana. This is part of football. And then Jerry kind of like tells me, he goes, I don't see this on the horizon,

but I'm going to use this example of how I felt when Tony Romo went down against Seattle. So now 2016, hence the time travel. And he goes, and how I felt two and a half months later, three months later, Jerry legitimately said this, when you had to make a decision whether Tony was starting or death. And he goes, so I'm not trying to coach anybody up on how to handle adversity, but you need something positive to hang on to for a certain period of time, and that's what I'm doing. And now I am not here for quarterback controversy island.

I firmly believe that Crescott is the best quarterback. and most talented in the Cowboys building. Right, as I think most of us would. But I also think that Jerry has convinced himself that because when Tony Romo went down in 2016, Dak saved the day, like, that just happens. And that, like, Dak is always going to be able to save the day in every situation.

And even possibly that, like, they don't have to make all competitive advantage decisions because it's fine. Dak can elevate the team. That would be a pretty nice, nice aisle. to live on. Just it's all going to work out. That's, first of all,

I just absolutely love the image of, of you chasing Jerry down. And Jerry just like turning. I'm just picturing him just turning and then being like, you know what, I'm going to impart my viewpoint here that Cooper Rush is to Dak Prescott as Dak Prescott was to Tony Romo, which to me seems like very suspect logic.

But as you explain this, I wonder if that mentality is something that we can see not just being applied to this situation and how they're going to deal with missing DAC for several games and how they view the hit to the competitive fortunes of the Cowboys for 2022, since they have to withstand that loss in this injury. but I wonder if you can sort of apply it to a lot of the roster decisions that got the Cowboys to a place where on Sunday, they didn't look very good before Dak got hurt, right? And we know that Dak Prescott is a very good quarterback. He's worthy of the commitment that the Cowboys have made to him. But we were watching DAC operate this offense that's lost talent at the receiver positions. It's lost, some experienced players in the offensive line. And it looked a lot worse than I was certainly expecting it, too. What did you think just of the Cowboys performance before DAC? And can that, you know, next man up as a viable strategy mindset,

explain kind of how they got to the point where we were watching him try to operate with so much less talent around him and going, oh, this might not be what we thought it was going to be. Yeah, I think that DAC and every member of the Cowboys organization would tell you that the first three and a half quarters when DAC was healthy did not look good. The Cowboys lost 19 to 3 to the Buccaneers. I believe they were the only team that didn't score a touchdown this week. And this is coming from like the league's highest, most productive offense last year. And granted some of that was in garbage time last year, but still they could not get the ball moving.

they couldn't convert on third down. They had 10 penalties, eight of which were on offense. I mean, those are not winning numbers that we're talking about here. And so when I think about how you survive without DACCrescott for several weeks, I think about what you needed to do to survive even with him, which is you need to have CD Lamb look like the number one receiver. You need to not rely on your quarterback to do everything. You need to understand that if Ezekiel Elliott's past protection is significantly superior to Tony Pollard,

you can't just downplay that on a week when you're starting a new left tackle and a new left guard. And yes, this Cowboys defense looks solid, not elite yet, but solid, especially against an attack led by Tom Brady. But this is 2022. And this is an offense-driven league. And Micah Parsons cannot play every position on both sides of the field and special teams as much as he wants to. So the Cowboys need to- Or as much as we might like to see him try. I wouldn't be opposed to at least getting to watch that. Oh, 100%.

And I mean, he does that type of step in practice. He, like, begs John Fossil to return once. And he's capable of all of it. It's not in their best interest. But I really think that, like, going back to this 2016 idea, the Cowboys thrived in Dak's rookie year, 13 and 3, best out of C, regular record, a regular season record. But they did it both because Dak was great and because as any good quarterback in this league needs, he had a good offensive line.

He had weapons. He had a healthy rookie Zeke. I mean, this is not a knock on a quarterback. If you go to Patrick Mahomes, you're not saying, hey, we're taking Travis Kelsey from you or we're not trading for Orlando Brown. You're not telling Tom Brady he can't go get his guys off the street. And you're not telling, I mean, really any quarterback in this league that they're not allowed to have their weapons.

Josh Allen, you gave him Stefan Diggs. So I think to suggest that because DAC is being paid, which again, not being paid the most, even though Jerry likes to make it out that way sometimes, that he shouldn't have the help around him is just, I mean, it's not realistic. So I think of just in terms of the help that he's lost, I think of some of the departures at receiver, Amari Cooper, most notably, but also Cedric Wilson, who's in Miami now, and then on the offensive line where the big names would be Connor Williams,

Lail Collins, am I missing any key pieces that they've said goodbye to where, you know, maybe you're going, okay, everybody has a limited amount of resources, but I sure hope there's a plan here for how to replace those snaps, how to replace that production. Yeah, so those were the four big ones on offense. Randy Gregory would,

I would add to the list on the defensive side. Sure. But the problem is that you willingly parted with four of your offensive starters right there, and then your left tackling quarterback went down and Tyrant Smith and back Crescott. Tyran's out likely until at least December after fracturing his knee, tearing his handstring.

And so I think that in a league where injuries are going to happen, they're inevitable, to just all of a sudden, and you were healthy last year and you didn't advance. So, I mean, Jerry likes to sort of make an addition by subtraction situation that if Amari Cooper didn't lead them all the way through the playoffs and L. Collins didn't do everything he needed. Well, then why pay them? But if you're saying that they're not the answer, you need to have an answer to substitute it for it. It's like, don't leave your job until you have a better option, right? Right. Well, and particularly, I mean, the Cowboys get players from outside their organization all the time, but for a team that has this real emphasis on we like homegrown players,

we like to draft and develop, we want to rely on the guys that we got them into the league in the first place, it kind of, like, you can't really have it both ways, right? Because either it's like, well, we like the guys that we already had, we can say goodbye to these guys and count on the players we already have on our roster to fill in the blanks. On the other hand, they were on your roster last year. Now, player improvement is the big part of why team's fortunes change from year to year. So maybe in certain cases, you feel like, okay, this guy's really, really ready to step up.

In some instances, though, you kind of have to say, like, yeah, but they weren't playing the season before for a reason. they didn't win a starting job over, you know, an Amari Cooper for a reason. So you, it just, it defies a little bit of logic, although I admire the positivity in a lot of ways to kind of use the next man up mentality that's important to, you know, every team uses that as a talking point, right? Because too many injuries happen. But if that becomes your roster construction strategy, I guess there's one

way to phrase it where like next man up would be a good roster construction strategy because you're making sure that the next man up can actually compete. But if the idea is just that, oh, don't worry about it. It's worked in the past. So that guy is going to be good. Like, I just, I worry seriously about what that leads to, which I guess is the thing that we're going to get to take a look at over the course of the next month. I have a question for you, though, because the way that we're talking about it, I think the picture painted is kind of like there's this over-reliance on DAC can fix everything.

DAC will make it all okay no matter what happens. And I think you can look at their decisions on offense, you know, particularly like the cap is what it is sometimes, right? Players leave. That's how free agency works. I particularly look at the Amari Cooper situation just because they got so little in return for him and question that. But overall, you see the amount of talent that's left on the Cowboys offense and go like,

okay, maybe you shouldn't rely so much on just thinking that DAC can fix everything. I wonder if just in the interest of fairness, that reliance and that view that like, oh, the offense is going to be okay as long as we have DAC, has that. Has that gotten them to invest on the defensive side of the ball a little bit more than they might otherwise at least? I just think back through the last several drafts where in 2021 they take five players in the first 100 picks, all defensive players. That's obviously where they get Michael Parsons, who's one of the top cornerstone players that you would mention when talking about their roster right now. A diggy Zua, also a contributing player, right? not of the same caliber as the Parsons,

but still it's a useful player to have in your roster. And then since the draft where they took DAC, where they took Zeke Elliott, the first player they've taken, they've had six drafts since then, and the first player taken four times has been a defensive player. Now, obviously, the results there, who's turned into a star and who hasn't,

those are mixed. But before I just completely go like, okay, they've deluded themselves into thinking that Dack can solve all their problems. Is there any silver lining there that there are a few cornerstone pieces on this roster that they've drafted kind of because they feel like DAC can just be their offense and carry their offense all by himself? Yeah, I mean, I think, again, it's always like a where are we cutting the study here.

So yes, they've got a bunch of defensive picks in a recent year. But right before that, they had left tackle, Tyron Smith, right guard, Zach Martin and center Travis Frederick all within the same decade. Those are all offensive linemen they were picking. Zeke was in the first round. In 2019, they didn't have a first round pick because Amari Cooper they had traded for it, receiver.

So I think that they have been investing some on offense. I don't know that it's like a really longstanding situation, but I do think they basically were, like you're saying, said, well, if this is what we did in 2016 with Dak, we can do that going forward. and the song I hear playing in my head when this happens is I'm like picturing like and it's almost like Jerry just stopped listening and turned off the radio after miracles happened and it's funny I remember doing this story a couple of years ago after

Zieg had fumbled and interviewing a sports psychologist nor is like cracking ever again. I was dying that's the best reference I've ever heard we're dropping that song in we're going to play it please please Spotify okay sorry I caught you because you blew my mind with a Princess Diaries reference, but continue. That's what we're playing on my island. That's what we're playing on my island. I stopped watching movies in like 2008, so that's about as far as I go. Okay, we can actually end the podcast because if you're playing the Princess Diaries soundtrack on your island, I'm already there.

Okay, great. Let's go. But yeah, no, I'm thinking back to two years ago, Zik had some fumbles, and I interviewed a sports psychologist, mental conditioning coach type guy for the story. And he said he would tell a player in that situation, the past is not predictive. just because you fumbled last game, doesn't mean you're going to fumble. And while you need to understand the sources, don't assume that because something happened before it's going to happen again. And I kind of think Jerry Jones, in his hybrid general manager,

building the team, owners selling the fan base that things are still exciting, has started thinking the past is predictive. So like, oh, Tyron Smith goes down, your eight-time purple left tackle? Well, Dak came in as a rookie and started. He could do it. Oh, Dak goes down? well, a quarterback went down before and DAC came in. I mean, he's rewritten that multiple times in the last few weeks alone.

And at some point, you can't just keep using the one outlier of an example to plan your roster. Again, that's why I think owner selling fans, you go for it. GM making decisions based on this, making cap allocations to not put DAC on IR, to not add another quarterback to the roster because you're like, well, Cooper Rush, he played in the preseason. Yeah, so did Cavante Turpin. And I don't think that he was returning any punts or kick returns for touchdowns in the regular season yet. Again, it's been week one.

Let's not overreact, Jory. But I just think that you need to have a little bit of an understanding of how are we all doing our part to step up and not just saying Dax worked magic before he's going to work magic again. Football season is underway. So now is the perfect time to download Fandul, America's number one sports book. Because right now, new customers get a no sweat, first bet up to $1,000. That's free bets back if your first bet doesn't win. Just sign up with promo code Ringer NFL. I'd take the Bengals or the Titans to be able to bounce back after

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Okay. So let's talk about the next four weeks or so, the period, however long it ends up being when the Cowboys are going to be without Dak. So the next four games are Bengals, Giants, commanders, and then they have the Rams on October 9th, which from my understanding, I believe Jerry said on the radio, you would know better than I did, would. But I guess he said we want Dak to be a, quote, consideration for playing for us within the next four games,

which I do not have my Jerry to English. translation as perfectly honed as I'm sure you do. But what I take from that is like, okay, maybe Rams, because that's a big game at the earliest, does that, without putting a clear stamp on it, does that sound about right in terms of what they are thinking? Yeah, I definitely don't think he'll be there before that week five Rams game. I think that week five Rams game, week six Eagles game seems to be the most recent target, which is definitely before some of the later games, the October 30th, the Chicago game, November 30th. 13 Packers would have been the six to eight week realm.

And I think also, and they did this with Michael Gallup as well, who's finishing up his ACL rehab, is they really don't want practice restrictions on these guys. Now, again, that made more sense for Gallup, who could sort of like start running and cutting as he works his way back in than it does for DAC, who literally cannot grip a football right now. So I don't know what drills you're going to have him in. But Jerry, yes, that would be the timeline. And again, when you look at those games, like Rams and Eagles are going to be.

be pretty big games for that fight off contention. I mean, it's arguably the best team in the division right now and the defending Super Bowl champions who are also in the conference. So I understand why they would want him back if he's ready for there, whether they're being a little optimistic with that timeline.

We'll see. In terms of from now until then, whenever it is that he comes back, what's the vibe with the team in terms of how they're going to attack the next few weeks. I am assuming

that since the prognosis on when DAC could come back is a little bit more optimistic than it initially was, that they're pretty sure they're going to be sticking with Cooper Rush. Is that right? Yeah, they have no plans to trade

for her out of quarterback. We went again from Monday Mike McCarthy telling us he was holding a piece of paper that listed every quarterback available in the league to Tuesday, Jerry, saying we will not be going to the trade mill is Cooper Rush and Will Greer. I love a prop. There's nothing I love more than a prop.

I think Mike McCarthy likes a prop too. He had his binder at PFF. Do you remember his monkey butt prop? No. Okay. Now I need to, it was a, now I need to remember the story.

But he showed up to like a press conference with a, oh no, what he did is he handed out to the players last year, bottles of what's called monkey butt to motivate them. that it needed to be red blank week was his. Essentially like anti-chaping powder that he was giving out.

Oh, yes, I do remember this. That's so weird. That's just so weird, Jory. He also smashed watermelons in a Minnesota hotel a couple years. That I remember. The watermelon smashing, I very much. Yeah, it was hard to forget. But yeah, all that's to say, we love props here.

Sometimes we love more than adjusting our, play calls and schemes and ability to decrease penalties. But yeah, the plan is to go with Cooper Rush. He's the guy. He did come in a game against the Vikings last year when Dak had a calf strain. And you got to give him credit. He led them to a win on the road Sunday night football, found Mark Cooper, who you might remember is no longer here on that game winning touchdown. And, you know, I think what's interesting is we were with Mike McCarthy this week on Monday. And I said, look, I get that one of Cooper Rush's best qualities. your mind is that he knows this system. You don't need to switch out what everybody's doing. But when you

look at what y'all did against the Buccaneers, even with Jack Prescott, do you think you need to change some things? And McCarthy was pretty adamant that no, he didn't need to change anything. They just needed to execute better. And I think that's where you get into some challenges is, does this system actually work? And if not, how stubborn are you going to be that? You need to fix it. Do you think that there is anything in terms of, you know, how there are. calling the offense what Kellan Moore is doing that is available to them. Like is there sort of meat on the bone that maybe even while Cooper rushes is in there, they could pull and hopefully get a little bit more out of them than they've been getting. You mentioned earlier,

I think using Zeeke in past protection to chip a little bit more. Like, do you think there are certain schematic things that can help them in the meantime? Yeah. I mean, I think guys like Zee, guys like Dalton Schultz have been reliable, like sort of going to this. them. Kellyn Moore even admitted to us that he got a little too creative on some of his attempts to use Tony Pollard and it didn't work. I understand that you want to use some of that, but I also think that some of those jet suites didn't work great for them last year.

So I don't know why it was going to work better with a less experienced offensive line. I think they probably need to try the deep ball more, but also like be smart about when they're trying it. So by no means, do I think I've got the playbook that is going to save the Cowboys. sitting in my apartment right now with all these books. But I do think that they just need to be really honest with themselves about what's working and what's not. So that's a good thing, I think, to be one of the last things that we talk about here

before our moment of truth. Because I think we talk so much at the top about kind of like, okay, you traced us back to 2016 and how the Cowboys got to where they are and how that internalization of, oh, we got so lucky with how well drafting DAC turned out and Romo goes down, the type of thing that should sink a team, it actually ends up ushering in what feels like it could be this next era of, you know, good Cowboys teams and good Cowboys offenses. And they've probably underdelivered overall since that point. But still, they've been a legitimate contender whenever, at least for their division,

whenever DAC has been healthy, you walked us through that so well in terms of how it's kind of created this mentality of what they need to do in terms of putting players around him. Is there any chance that if the next month goes poorly, it serves as a wake-up call that that kind of mentality is,

is not always helpful. And I'm not asking, should it? I'm asking, is there a chance that it actually will? I mean, the fact that they're not even willing to put their quarterback on IR when he has surgery suggests to me that their reckoning with reality is a little bit skewed. I'll give them credit for the last time. They didn't have the receiver depth they needed in 2018 and they traded for a Mari-Cooper at the deadline. they did it that one time.

That's the exception more than the rule. So I would be surprised if they did anything drastic this year. And I think they're going to keep saying, oh, we're not out of it. The NFC East is still viable. And that's what they like to lean on instead of being like, here's what's wrong and here's how we want to fix it. It's like you guys think that we're out of the playoffs. But the NFCs count isn't better.

We had one player tell us this week. We know who we are. And I'm like, the fact that you're saying that makes me wonder if you know who you are. So I think that it would not be worth putting a Vegas bet on Jerry Jones coming to terms with the reality, but I've been wrong before. Does that, would that coming to terms process do anything either way in terms of Mike McCarthy's job security? Do you think that's something that's part of the conversation right now or is, does Jerry's optimism translate to how he looks at the head coach right now? I mean, I think that we need to go back to January when the Cowboys were the only home team to lose in the wild card round. And Jerry was mad.

He wouldn't publicly say that Mike McCarthy had his job security. He started to intentionally peddle rumors about Dan Quinn being his head coach. And you can't put it past Jerry to do things like that because we've seen even in this calendar year that he does. Do I think that they're going to get rid of Mike in the first four weeks when they lose their quarterback? No. but I think that he wants to see for Mike, not only that he can lead this team through adversity, but that they could rise above expectations,

that they can make a deep run in the playoff. And if not, then, I mean, Mike was hired because he had that Super Bowl title to take the Cowboys deep in the playoffs, and they really have not been able to sustain any kind of postseason success. And if you're not seeing the ingredients to that, I think Jerry will start off by giving the whole,

okay, here's why it's going to work, here's why you should believe and keep coming to the games fans, but eventually his patience will run thin. And as he says at his age, he doesn't have time to have a bad time. So it's definitely relevant to McCarthy's long-term job security, absolutely. Especially with Sean Payton hopping on a television quite often to offer his viewpoints on the Cowboys, among other things,

as he has seemed want to do recently. I don't know if that's sort of on the radar at Dallas, but I've noticed that in a lot of his appearances, he seems to have things to say about what's going on in Dallas. Oh, he loves that. You can never, you can cut that out. But Sean will always, will always add his voice to the conversation.

All right. I think it is time for a moment of truth where I figure out if I am coming to the island with you, to this Cowboys Time Travel Island. Here, you've taken us back, actually, not only to 2016, but just in that answer about the coaching situation to last January, which is also a very, very valuable stop along the way. I'm stalling here because I'm totally there.

I'm totally, totally on Cowboys Time Travel Island with Ejorie. I think that is a really, really useful way of crystallizing how they wound up where they are. I think it makes so much of what, you know, we saw on Monday to be true in kind of like this moment and time of, okay, why are they losing this game? Losing this game. Well, even before the quarterback gets hurt because there's been this talent accidents.

And you can look at that and just go like, look at those dumb decisions. Why would you let Amari Cooper walk? Like, why would you trade him for such little in return or even think about releasing him and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and I think understanding it through that kind of eternal optimism lens really makes it all make sense. I think probably the most valuable thing for the cowboys would be if Jerry himself could join the island with us. Or maybe he needs to leave the island. What's his yacht's name?

The Bravo Eugenia. Okay, so if the Bravo Eugenia pulls up on Cowboys Time Travel Island to join us, I think that's a really, really good side for the Cowboys going forward. I am not counting on it, but I am counting on you for having given us this very enlightening perspective on Dallas, particularly because, you know, we only hinted at the division, but you mentioned kind of as the secondary factor to, oh, DAC will take care of it, that. oh, the NFC East is the NFC East has also been this constant thing that they've been able to rely on and it's all going to be okay because of the division. That seems like, you know, you look at the Eagles, that's a team that has a lot of building blocks, is playing hard, has a quarterback who is exciting in the present tense, and also if he turns out to be less exciting over the course of the season,

or if they end up thinking that Jalen Hurd, keeps a ceiling on that team, has a ton of resources to get someone next offseason. So if the DAC thing continues to kind of be a crutch that ends up causing problems in the long run, and the NFC East gets better, which, look, it's only week one, as we've said a dozen times. Brian Davel doesn't do it. Brian Davel is going to be the thing that does it. The entire division, he is going to bring up with him. Brian Table is going to single-handedly

drive the Bravo Eugenia with Jerry Jones in tow to this island and it's going to change the trajectory of the Dallas Cowboys. That'll be fantastic to watch if we get to watch it, which I actually don't think that we will. Jory, I'm on the island with you. I'm so happy to be there listening to The Princess Diary soundtrack. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us.

Thank you to all our listeners for listening to the island. We will be back next week. Tomorrow, the illustrious Shield Capadia will have you covered on this feed going in depth on some newsy NFL topics. Thank you to Stefan Anderson for production on this episode

and to Connor Nevins and our Juna Ramgapal for additional production supervision.