Week 14’s Cowboys and Giants game has been flexed to early slot, a new low reached for Dallas

Towards the tail end of the 2016 season, the Dallas Cowboys played five games in a row on national television.

They hosted the Redskins on Thanksgiving, visited the Vikings on Thursday Night Football, traveled to take on the Giants on Sunday Night Football, played the Buccaneers on Sunday Night Football, and beat the Lions at home on Monday Night Football the day after Christmas.

It was that Week 15 game against the Buccaneers, the one where Ezekiel Elliott jumped into the kettle, that was a little different among the group. Considering where Tampa Bay stood at the time, the NFL flexed it into Sunday night, given the sexiness of the game overall.

One year later, the Cowboys are on the opposite side of the spectrum. Their Week 14 game in New York against the Giants is getting flexed to the 1 PM ET slot, away from the 4 PM ET slot.

This is, quite frankly, a new low for the Dallas Cowboys.

In a normal world, the NFL would never allow the Cowboys to play in the early time slot. This is the portion of Sundays that is, while exciting in the final minutes, not one that is counted on to draw ratings.

There are around 10 games that occur in Sunday’s early slot, and they’re the ones involving the more boring teams across the NFL. The Browns of the world always play early, because the NFL knows nobody will watch them on their own so they jumble all the games together.

The Jaguars of the world are also normally in this bunch, but their game against the Seattle Seahawks is the one getting put in place of the Cowboys and Giants showdown.

Think about that. Think about it long and hard. The NFL believes Blake Bortles at home against the Seattle Seahawks is a bigger and better draw than the game they count on every year to boost their Sunday Night Football kickoff ratings.

The NFL is literally tossing aside their favorite toy for a rag doll here. It’s humiliating.

It’s well-known just how much the Cowboys saved the NFL’s ratings last season, part of why the aforementioned five-game stretch happened, but the current iteration of the team is so bad and underwhelming that the NFL is essentially throwing it in the trash.

The Cowboys just suffered their worst loss ever at AT&T Stadium against Philadelphia, coincidentally on Sunday Night Football. They failed to reach double-digits in points scored for the third consecutive time, a first in franchise history, on a national stage against the Chargers on Thanksgiving.

For so long, none of that mattered. The fact that they were the Cowboys trumped it because, well, they’re the Cowboys.

It seems that shine is no longer enough. It seems like things have finally caught up to the Cowboys.