00:00Remember those days? January 22nd, 1983. Dexter, Daryl Grant, the second, in my opinion,
00:11most iconic play in franchise history after, of course, John Riggins' fourth and one Super Bowl
00:18run that came the following week. Actually, it wasn't two weeks later. That strike-shortened
00:23season. They just had one week between the championship game and the Super Bowl in Pasadena.
00:31The rivalry, for those of you not old enough to remember or not from here, it wasn't just the best
00:40rivalry in the NFL. It was a top five rivalry in all of sports, North American sports. Anyway,
00:48that's what Cowboys versus Redskins was in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s. I'd say even into the
00:572000s. I think that after the Snyder reign of terror really took hold and we realized just how
01:08downtrodden the franchise was and people started to disappear from the fan base in the 2010s.
01:16And really, the later 2010s, for sure, really accelerated. But Dallas-Washington was still
01:24into the 2000s, a big, big football game. 2012, they played a game against each other
01:31in the season finale, the final game of the regular season, Sunday night football,
01:36final week for the division, the RG3 year. That was the Alfred Morris game when he rushed for
01:42200 yards. In 2016, Dallas was 9-1. Washington was 6-3-1 and they played on Thanksgiving Day.
01:50And it was electric. And that game in the moment was the most watched regular season game in NFL
02:00history on Fox. So it was still, you know, a deal in 2016. But here we are 10 years later.
02:10And these two teams just haven't played enough in meaningful spots over the years. The Cowboys
02:18haven't won enough in the postseason. They are the last, or they're the team that is most distant
02:25between today and their last NFC championship game appearance, which was after the 95 season.
02:34Washington was second most up until two years ago when they ended up in the championship game
02:40against the Eagles. These two teams, for whatever reason, even though they've had some moments,
02:47and Dallas has had more moments, and I'm talking about regular season moments because their moments
02:51have not been in the postseason. They've been a choking dog franchise in the postseason for basically
02:5930 years now. But even when they've had moments, and Washington's had fewer moments, but an occasional
03:06moment, you know, winning the division in 2012 against Dallas, they did play. The 2016 season,
03:14they were both good at the same time. But too many times, they aren't good at the same time.
03:20One team's terrible, and the other is just okay. Or maybe the other's in the midst of a
03:25decent regular season. It's hard to really sustain a legitimate rivalry, even against a division team,
03:35if more times than not, the matchup isn't a meaningful one. And man, they have played a lot
03:41of end-of-season games in recent years that have been totally meaningless. You know, the Cowboys have
03:49won eight out of the last 10 against Washington, and the two games Washington won were both end-of-season
03:56meaningless games. You know, the Sam Howell game, remember, in 2022? And then the game a few years
04:05ago that Marcus Mariota threw a touchdown pass to Terry McLaurin on the final play of the game. I mean,
04:11Washington has not won a meaningful game against Dallas, or, you know, a game that was meaningful to
04:17the standings at a point in the season where they were both alive since they pummeled Dallas on
04:25Thanksgiving Day back in the COVID year, 41-16. Antonio Gibson, I believe, had a big day. The question at
04:36301-230-0980 is simple. It is, do you still consider Washington-Dallas to be a top-tier or a
04:50marquee NFL
04:52rivalry? We can all admit that pretty much any matchup between division teams, you know, that have been
05:00together for decades upon decades. You can call it a rivalry. I'm not saying that I'm not calling
05:07Washington-Dallas a rivalry. It's to the extent of the, you know, where you would put the rivalry on
05:15the list of rivalries in the NFL. Is it a top-tier? Is it a marquee rivalry still? 301-230
05:24-0980. I mean,
05:26you can go division by division in the NFL. And Atlanta-New Orleans is a rivalry. Now, in the NFL,
05:34for NFL fans, it's not a marquee rivalry. But for that division and for those fan bases, that is a
05:42rivalry. You know, Cleveland-Pittsburgh is pretty intense. Pittsburgh-Cincinnati, pretty intense. But it's not a
05:49marquee top-tier NFL rivalry. I would put, honestly, right now, Pittsburgh-Baltimore, number one on the
05:57list. And then, I don't know what comes next. Because of all the change, all the turnover roster-wise,
06:06the up-and-down nature of franchises in today's NFL, it's hard to identify what would be next.
06:13Chicago-Green Bay, Denver-Kansas City. It's not, certainly, Seattle and the Rams in the very
06:23current. But that's not a marquee NFL rivalry. San Francisco-Seattle was there for a while. And
06:30San Francisco-Rams at times. But I don't even know what number two after Pittsburgh-Baltimore would be.
06:39Really. It's not an easy answer. Pittsburgh-Baltimore, in terms of the last 20 years,
06:47has been the NFL's best rivalry, in my opinion. You know, even in a year like last year, where
06:54neither team was great, right? But they played a season-ending game for the division. Season-ending.
07:02And the kicker for Baltimore missed a makeable field goal on the final play of the game,
07:07final play of the regular season. Pittsburgh won the division. Baltimore went home.
07:15301-230-0980. You know, I feel like there are a lot of factors. Number one, what I've talked about,
07:25not enough meaningful football against each other for a long period of time. Number two is,
07:31this organization in particular got worn down and really, in many ways, evaporated during the Snyder
07:39years. Number three, Philadelphia has been really, really good over a long period of time. And they
07:46have played so many more meaningful games against the Cowboys that for Cowboys fans, the Eagles are
07:53their number one rival. It's really not even a conversation anymore. Number four is, look,
08:00this goes back to the name change and the branding, etc. That laid a bit of a gut punch to
08:09not only the
08:10franchise and the passion that people had for the franchise, but the things that were tangential
08:16to it, the rivalries, you know, when you tune in Sunday and for many of us and you hear Cowboys
08:24commanders, you throw up in your mouth when you hear that. At least the uniforms will look like
08:30they have over the years up until the last few years. Excited about that. You know, they wore those
08:36uniforms and made the Cowboys wear their blues on Thanksgiving on Christmas Day last year. It actually
08:41looked like a Cowboys Redskins game, a Washington Dallas game. But really at the core of it is
08:49when one team's been the worst team in the division over a long period of time and the other team
08:56hasn't been great either, but has had many more successful regular seasons and many more big matchups
09:03against another team in the division, it loses its luster. And as of today, my answer would be
09:12no. Washington Dallas is no longer in the moment a marquee top tier NFL rivalry. The rest of the
09:22country will watch the game because it's in a highlighted spot. You know, Dallas is in a lot of
09:28highlighted, highlighted spots. They are the biggest draw in the sport still, or certainly one
09:33of them. Washington is not. Now it could become that way again. It was great to play Philadelphia
09:40three times in 2024. It would be great to play two incredibly meaningful games against the Cowboys
09:46this year. That would be fun. I used to root for Washington and Dallas to be good at the same
09:53time,
09:53just so that the Washington-Dallas games would have the meaning that they used to have.
09:59They finish with Dallas at home this year, you know, in mid-January. Possible, just like many of
10:07the games against Dallas late in the season in recent years, that it'll be meaningless. We'll see.
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