The New Dallas Cowboys Docuseries Is About America’s Faded Team and Living Under Elder Rule

In the seventh and eighth episodes, the warts of Cowboy culture most come into focus, though it is somewhat unsatisfying. The Ways lay all the evidence on the table when going through Michael Irvin’s 1996 trial for drug possession, but the competing voices to Irvin’s account are mostly there to dryly establish context and the setting. Meanwhile, you will find yourself sitting there waiting for someone to ask the question that’s swirling in your head: how did Irvin ultimately get away with probation while facing two decades in prison? 

The same thing happens when the filmmakers take us to the time, a short while later, when Irvin cut the throat of a teammate (Everett McIver) over his place in line for a haircut. Back then, nobody said nothing, and the incident faded away, reported as a bit of horseplay. 

Irvin admits, in the doc, that he was saved from prison by the way McIver handled the situation (aka not pressing charges). He seems legitimately shamed by his actions, but again, you’re sitting there, waiting for someone to ask what bit of magic or luck interceded to spare Jerry Jones’ favorite player from real consequences for his actions. 

The million-dollar superstar athlete who is not subject to the same rules as everyone else is as clichéd as it is a sad comment on the double standards in our society, but digging deeper into the how and why of it and asking questions toward that end is something of weight and importance. 

For a team as famous for its generation-ago success and superstars as it was infamous for drug charges, DUIs, domestic abuse complaints, and sexual harassment allegations, it’s fair to expect a deep dive into the sordid layers of “America’s Team.” Instead, we mostly get a surface accounting that introduces fixers, a fuck house, a murder for hire plot, and a whirl of past toxic headlines. This series just does not go far enough in its effort to give a megaphone and ample screen time to enough critical voices of Jones, his coaches, and the players. People who might make this feel more balanced and captivating. Why? Perhaps the star power would have dimmed had this been a more confrontational exercise. If a legend falls in the thick brush of an under watched docuseries filled with bit players and unknown hangers-on, does it make a dent or a cent? Such is the dilemma plaguing most docs that need to walk a line when high-profile brand-conscious stars are the subject. 

When it comes to that mystery of what the hell happened to the Cowboys in the 30 years since their last Super Bowl, the series reveals its most defined point of view. While still handling Jones with kid gloves in the autumn of his life, the filmmakers do ask why he continues to wear so many hats (to the displeasure of many Cowboys fans and pundits). They also swing back at the end to focus on lingering regrets about the Johnson divorce and what might have been. This leads to a full-circle, emotionally satisfying made-for-Hollywood ending that reminds you that, despite any trails not taken in the series, the Way brothers are exceptional storytellers. But it’s still impossible to come away seeing Jones as anything other than another brash, out-of-touch old man who wants to rule forever – a common affliction we’re witnessing across the cultural landscape, from C-suites to the Oval Office. 

Jones’ stated insistent obsession with driving the Cowboys, making America’s Team great again, and the current state of the organization (especially following the ill-advised jettisoning of Micah Parsons – which feels more like an ego-driven move than a football one) offers a natural comparison to the state of America as a whole in 2025. 

Isn’t the mainstream political media operating from a place where the boundaries of journalism and PR sometimes blur in the name of better access? Aren’t personality conflicts, hurt feelings, and egos reigning supreme? Isn’t our unrealized potential constantly dangled just out of reach while nostalgia poisons us, and these old, rich men disrupt the natural flow of generational succession?

As with Cowboys fans, this is a tragic story of people being held hostage by a generation that has been told (and who have told themselves) that it was the best and most favored by Gods and fortune. This has empowered them to try to drag us all back to a time that they say was better and that only they remember. An era made halcyon by privilege and distance from reality. The 1950s, the 1960s, the 1980s, as well as the 1992 through 1995 season for the Cowboys, when everything came so easily, and they were young and beloved. 

In Jerry Jones, I see Joe Biden refusing to honor his vow to be a bridge and not run again. I see Gerry Connolly thwarting AOC’s attempt to be the lead Democrat on the oversight committee (months before he died). Mitch McConnell’s thousand-yard stare when his brain changed the channel on him. And Trump likely dreaming of White House ballroom parties well into his 80s, despite his Michelin man ankles not being fit for dancing and a constitution not fit for dictatorial rule. 

There’s a line at the very end of the Cowboys series that has stuck with me. Deion Sanders, reflecting on the Cowboys’ current situation, joyfully and confidently declares that today’s Dallas players aren’t chasing the Eagles, Commanders, or Giants; they’re chasing those glorious ‘90s Cowboys and that glowing legacy, which he then says is “a beautiful thing.” And no, goddammit, Deion, it is fucking not. 

It’s weird as hell to make your imagined immortality everyone else’s problem, but Jerry Jones and the other elder ruler “Cowboys,” “Gamblers,” and “Mavericks,” keep doing it to our detriment. 

How bout that bullshit?