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The Dallas Cowboys lost last week and that has a lot of people concerned about the future of the season. Sometimes one week is all people need to jump to dramatic conclusions.
It’s true that the Cowboys could have looked a lot better in Los Angeles, but football is back and that much is worth celebrating. Obviously we all want to see the Cowboys have success and they will need to rebound well and have success against the Atlanta Falcons or else that will be made all the more difficult if they start the season off 0-2.
Football fans in general can often be fickle and live week to week. We track how confident Cowboys fans feel after every game using SB Nation Reacts data and, surprisingly, fans aren’t as down as you might have expected.
Cowboys fans didn’t drop a ton in confidence after the Week 1 loss
Last week we talked about how Cowboys fans were hovering at 70% confidence in the team at the season’s beginning which didn’t totally gel with the national hype that the group had been receiving. Plenty of people picked the Cowboys to at least appear in the Super Bowl so 70% was different from all of that, but oftentimes those that know the team best tend to be a bit less rosy.
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We have been doing this exercise for a few years now and generally after a Cowboys loss confidence dips by at least 10%. Interestingly things dropped from 70% to 64% so Cowboys fans are feeling right around the same as they were this time last week. Perhaps there are less people regretting the Mike McCarthy hire as the internet would have you think.
The reality is that Dallas lost and while that is very frustrating there are still 15 games left in the regular season. An 0-1 record doesn’t exactly suggest that this is the worst team or coach in the history of football.
If the Cowboys are unable to win on Sunday it is very possible that this downward trend picks up some serious steam. For now it’s nice to see that people are generally giving Mike McCarthy some time, but all time tends to run out when it comes to America’s Team.