Dez Bryant caught it 10 years ago today. It has been a decade.
It has officially been a decade. The cold, fateful day in question was officially 10 years ago today. It was then when the Dallas Cowboys, the 2014 Cowboys if not obvious, ventured to Lambeau Field for a playoff game for the first time since the Ice Bowl and appropriately frigid conditions welcomed them.
Those Cowboys, the magical 2014 Cowboys, did not know it, but they were up against their eventual kryptonite in the Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rodgers. As fate would have it the franchise was also up against their future (still so potentially, an entirely different topic) head coach in Mike McCarthy. In fact, it was McCarthy who threw the red challenge flag that served as the catalyst for why were are here today.
On 4th and 2, from the Green Bay 32-yard line, while trailing by five points with under that many minutes left in the game, Tony Romo trusted Dez Bryant. And Dez Bryant delivered.
Then the challenge came. And we have been stuck in another dimension of the purgatory that the franchise was on the verge of escaping at that moment ever since.
We have gone over this many times in the decade (officially) since.
It is understood that Dez caught it. The NFL admitted it when they changed (or further complicated) the rule of what constitutes a catch. Mike McCarthy coyly admitted it when he took over as the Cowboys head coach.
We also know that the game was not necessarily won when Dez caught it. Even if the Cowboys had scored, Aaron Rodgers had many moments in him since that point in time that would burn the Cowboys. It stands very well to reason that he would have offered one that was lost to history.
What’s more, we all also know that the game was lost more in other moments. There was the block on Dan Bailey’s field goal and the DeMarco Murray fumble. Those things carry more actual weight in retrospect, but the pain of Dallas being so close after Dez caught it to only have it taken away created a deeper wound that even a decade-old scar doesn’t fully cover.
Consider that as the Cowboys walked off of the field at Lambeau that day that their playoff loss ensured the franchise’s drought would grow another year. At that point in time The Drought™ was only 19 years old. We haven’t quite doubled it in the time since, but if it were a human being it went from being somewhere likely in college to having an adult job, maybe even a family and child of their own. That much time has passed us by.
Dez caught it. Then. Today. Forever.
Happy anniversary, I guess.