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Welcome to Groundhog Day: Dallas Cowboys keep waking to an ‘extraordinarily’ disappointing reality

Sickening. Surprising. Tough to swallow. All are apt descriptors for a team that wasted its potential... again.

A few teams every year are convinced they’re in the midst of a special season.

Until it ends earlier than expected.

Dallas must confront this harsh reality. An organization that casually dropped comments in recent weeks that this team was different from recent versions, that this was a team you could trust, is now scrambling to rationalize the latest disappointment.

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Jerry Jones has become the NFL equivalent of Phil Connors, the cynical TV weatherman from the movie Groundhog Day, who wakes up every morning only to relive the same day. The first words the owner of the Cowboys uttered to the media in the aftermath of the wild-card loss to San Francisco was that he was “extraordinarily disappointed” and wouldn’t be talking long.

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“I really did — not as a given — but I thought we’d go out here and win this game,” Jones said.

“I’m surprised and sick.”

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Pro Bowl guard Zack Martin said the first-round exit was tough to swallow. Right tackle La’el Collins said the players expected more from themselves.

Receiver Amari Cooper was one of the first players to publicly utter his thoughts that this Cowboys team was special. And now?

“When I said what I said, I did feel that way,” Cooper said. “We have a special team.

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“Hopefully, we get a lot of the same guys back.”

They won’t. The nucleus will return, but some key players on both sides of the ball won’t be back next season. Head coach Mike McCarthy will likely need to replace one coordinator and possibly two.

There’s a lot to sort through in the coming days and weeks. Here are a few topics to start.

The Cowboys should feel good about a 12-5 regular season record. There was dramatic improvement on the defensive side of the ball from McCarthy’s first season as head coach. This should be a more balanced team going forward than previous versions, giving Dallas more ways to win in the postseason.

But a more accurate gauge of how this team stacks up in the conference was provided in the first 16 days of this month. The Cowboys were down 22-7 entering the fourth quarter of their game with Arizona on Jan. 2, a matchup they proclaimed to be a measuring stick and one that would serve notice to how dangerous they would be in the postseason.

Dallas was down 23-7 to the Niners entering Sunday’s fourth quarter. Both games were at AT&T Stadium.

Both were losses.

Quarterback Dak Prescott fell to 1-3 in the postseason with Sunday’s loss. Picking up on that 16-point deficit entering the final period against San Francisco …

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Prescott and the Cowboys were down by 15 points entering the fourth quarter of the quarterback’s first playoff game against Green Bay back in 2017. He was down by four entering the final period against Seattle two years later — the one game he won — and came back the next week to fall behind the LA Rams by 13 points at halftime.

Sense a trend? Prescott was 14 of 27 with no touchdown passes, one interception and four sacks in the second half of Sunday’s loss.

“I’m damn proud of Dak Prescott and I’m super happy he’s our quarterback,” McCarthy said.

Eight players had more receptions than CeeDee Lamb on Sunday. Lamb and Tony Pollard are two of the team’s most explosive offensive threats.

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They combined to touch the ball eight times for a total of 52 yards in the first round dismissal.

The loss to the Niners slotted the Cowboys into the No. 24 pick in the first round of the April draft.

My suggestion: Use it on the best offensive lineman on the board.

This is no longer a dominant offensive line. There are too many weeks it’s not even average. A long, hard look must be taken at every position other than Martin at right guard.

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This is arguably the biggest area of concern entering the offseason.

“It’s no secret,” Martin said. “We need to get better.”

This team needs to get better across the board to return to the playoffs for a second consecutive season. The last time that happened was 2006-07.

“I feel like we could have done a better job of honoring the moment, you know, taking care of business on the field,” defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence said. “The results are not what we wanted them to be.

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“It is what it is.”

Again.

And again.

And again.

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Catch David Moore and Robert Wilonsky as they co-host Intentional Grounding on The Ticket (KTCK-AM 1310 and 96.7 FM) every Wednesday night from 7-8 p.m. through the Super Bowl.

Find more Cowboys coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.