To America’s Team, your fans ask: When?

Iwas holding out hope that the Dallas Cowboys were going to come back against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday and win a playoff game.

They did not. The Boys fell short in the end.

As a Cowboys fan, I can’t help but to ask one question — If not now, then when Dallas? When is America’s Team going to get back to the Super Bowl? OK, there were two questions.

I admit that hoping Dallas gets back to the NFL’s title game might be too much, so I am hoping that the Cowboys can someday just get past the divisional round (round 2).

Dallas has not been past the divisional round of the playoffs since 1995, also the year of its last Super Bowl victory.

The fact that the Cowboys have not been past the divisional round in 27 years does not come without some controversy.

On Jan. 11, 2015, in the NFC Divisional Round game against the Green Bay Packers, Dez Bryant’s catch was ruled incomplete and the Packers won, 26-21.

Tony Romo threw the 31-yard pass to Bryant on a 4th and 2 on the Packers’ 32-yard line. Green Bay’s head coach at the time, Mike McCarthy, challenged the initial ruling of a completed pass at the 1-yard line and was successful. (Oddly enough, McCarthy is the Cowboys’ head coach.)

Bryant, in 2021, says it was a catch. “It was a catch and forever will be a catch,” Bryant has stated.

I remember watching that game and I believed it was a completion. I was a little biased as a fan of the Boys, but it looked like a good grab to me.

Dallas’ loss against the 49ers on Sunday was painful. I felt like this was a year in which the Cowboys had enough weapons to make a solid playoff run. Instead, they lose, and everything the athletes worked for all year vanished.

I did some research and found that just five teams (the Chiefs, Packers, Buccaneers, Bills, Rams) had better early-season odds of winning this year’s Super Bowl. Even the odds makers had Dallas up there. It really is disappointing.

One main thing that I would like to see change is the level of the Cowboys’ discipline. Dallas was the most penalized team this season with 127 penalties for 1,103 yards.

They had 14 penalties for 89 yards in their 23-17 loss against San Francisco on Sunday.

I will continue to cheer for the Boys and hope they have success, but I am skeptic about how long it will take them to return to glory. The breakthrough will probably happen in a year that no one expects it.

If Dallas could just get back to the NFC championship game, I would be happy.