Perhaps there should have been some heavy-handed tempering of expectations for this Cowboys team. But it’s hard to do that when the new head coach has a Lombardi Trophy sitting on his bookshelf and the team adds electric players like CeeDee Lamb and Everson Griffen in the offseason.
The reality was that Mike McCarthy and his almost-entirely new coaching staff was going to need at least some time to adjust. Every new coaching staff has some learning curve. While McCarthy’s experience would have helped overcome that in a normal offseason, this was no normal offseason, so mistakes should have been expected.