The Cowboys hadn’t won a playoff game on the road since 1992 before Monday night. That season, they handed Jerry Jones the first of his three Lombardi Trophies after defeating the 49ers 30-20 in the NFC Championship Game.
In the interim, the Cowboys suffered some road losses, losing to Seattle in 2006 when Tony Romo dropped the ball on a field goal attempt and losing to Green Bay in the “Dez caught it” game in 2014. Since their victory in San Francisco in 1992, they were 0-8 in postseason games played on the road.
With only 12 of the 53 players on the team’s roster still alive, thirty years was a long time ago.
“This is about the 2022 Cowboys and the Buccaneers,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said. “It’s as simple and as clean as that. I know it might not be sexy, . . . but we’re excited to be able to go to San Francisco.”
Since 1995, when they won the Super Bowl, the Cowboys have not participated in the NFC Championship Game. This season, they must defeat the 49ers to advance to the championship game. The Cowboys would then have to travel to Philadelphia to defeat the Eagles in order to reach the Super Bowl if the Giants defeated the Eagles.
“Can it be done? We’ll find out,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. “But this team has a talent level and now has the intangible experiences that getting knocked down, getting up – all of those things we hear about, all of those things that represent football, all of that stuff, this team has had some of that. Everybody on this team knew that when they came to Tampa today that the world thought that Tom [Brady] would be sitting out there snatching it out, if not the last minute then maybe even earlier. And we’re getting to go home and get to go home again in San Francisco. We’ve got more mustard than when we got here.”
Brady and the Bucs were dominated by the Cowboys throughout. Even with No, the game never came into question. 12 from the opposite side.
Jones likes where his team is right now, despite the Cowboys’ missed opportunities to win another championship, especially when they had home-field advantage.
“I like to think that we can put something together that can go win it,” Jones said. “That’s very evasive, been very evasive for us. We’ve got a team here tonight that has enough skill in my opinion to go win it, and now we have some experiences that will build the intangible. So, I think we gained on it tonight.”
