Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989. During his first year of owning the team, the Cowboys lost 15 of 16 games.
But 1989 wasn’t the low point. In the opinion of executive V.P. Stephen Jones, 2010 was.
“In the 21 years we’ve had it, I’d say it’s the worst one we’ve had,” Stephen Jones told Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports. “We’ve had bad teams that didn’t do well, but maybe you had that feeling going in. This year, we were so hopeful about our chances, and there we were at 1-5 with no quarterback and pretty much knowing where we’d end up.
“We had such high expectations for this team -- and that’s why this is the toughest season we’ve had. The overwhelming thing you think about is what went wrong. And to sit there and have to chew on that, there’s not a lot of happiness.”
There will be even less happiness next Sunday, when the Packers or the Steelers will be doing a lot more than keeping up with these Joneses.
But it’s hard to disagree with the assessment. Every team’s performance is judged in relation to its preseason expectations. And the expectations for the Cowboys were high, especially with the Cowboys hosting for the first time the game in which they haven’t played in 15 years.
It’ll be at least 16 years between Super Bowl appearances for the Cowboys, and that will be the longest gap in franchise history, even if they make it to the championship game next season.