Dallas Cowboys

Will the Dallas Cowboys be Super Bowl contenders in 2022?

Updated Jan. 18, 2023 11:09 a.m. ET

The Dallas Cowboys fielded one of the most skilled teams in football last year yet were bounced out of the playoffs on Super Wild Card Weekend. With less talent on the roster in 2022, how likely is it for them to make a Super Bowl run?

Michael Irvin isn’t ruling it out. The Hall of Famer said his former team's loss of skill can be made up for with the addition of will. The "Speak For Yourself" crew isn’t buying it, however.

Emmanuel Acho said an unremarkable NFC East is making Dallas look like contenders.

"The Cowboys are the good student in a bad school," Acho explained. "The Cowboys run through the division, so all of a sudden we think that they are in fact great. But here’s the problem when you’re the good student in a bad school: eventually you have to face other students from other schools.

"And then you realize, we’re just not that talented. We’re just not that intelligent. When it’s time for you to take that standardized test – the playoffs – and be compared to every other student in football – the NFL – then you realize who exactly you are."

Last year, Dallas was a 12-5 division champ that went unbeaten against the NFC East and took down just two playoff teams during the regular season – wild-card participants Philadelphia and New England. Four of the Cowboys’ five defeats were to playoff teams. Their season, of course, ended on their own field in the opening round of the playoffs against a 10-win San Francisco 49ers team.

Irvin said it was the type of experience that could galvanize the club moving forward.

"If a team loses a little bit of skill but gains greater will, they can still do great things," Irvin said, per Clarence E. Hill Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "If the Cowboys can take the disappointment of that defeat against San Francisco, beating you at home ... if they can take that and internalize it in the offseason and come with less skill and more will and have a better season.

"If they felt the pain like we felt and like those fans ... I want to see them jokers on the field cry like that. I want it to hurt them like that. But I haven’t seen that. I hope they cry like karate men, on the inside. But I haven’t seen it outside."

All we’ve seen from Dallas over the past month is a host of defections, including key starters on both sides of the ball, as the front office worked feverishly to get under the cap. Given the expected regression from the NFC amid an arms race breaking out in the AFC this offseason, the Cowboys could win a comparable amount of games and claim another division title in 2022. But will they compete with the likes of the Rams, Buccaneers, Packers and 49ers?

Ric Bucher believes Dallas is setting the bar on winning its division rather than its conference, which could explain why the franchise owns just three playoff victories since 1997.

"If they weren’t on that level last year, then how can I say after losing Amari Cooper and losing what they lost on the defensive side of the ball that now suddenly they have the talent?" Bucher opined. "And I think what Michael Irvin is saying, they don’t have the heart. They don’t have the mentality that you need to go after a Super Bowl."

That’s not all the Cowboys are missing, according to Joy Taylor, who takes specific aim at coach Mike McCarthy.

"They do not have the talent to win a Super Bowl. They do not have the coaching to win a Super Bowl," Taylor asserted. "The way that [last] season ended – based off the expectations that they should have rightfully had, based off how they performed in the season and the talent that they had – was a catastrophe. And you continue to go forward with that, and you lost important pieces. So there’s no reason why anyone should consider them a Super Bowl contender."