“America’s Team” as Bill Belichick’s team?–andwrong–

Could you have imagined such a thought just a week ago? Can you really wrap your head around such a notion even now – despite what happened to the Dallas Cowboys in their 48-32 implosion against the Green Bay Packers in Sunday’s wild-card meltdown at AT&T Stadium?

Regardless, prepare yourself for a wave of supposition that’s going to be as unrelenting as the Arctic blast consuming the country.

It had already started when Dallas went into the locker room down 27-7, if not well beforehand.

“If (head coach) Mike McCarthy doesn’t have a magical comeback?” said former All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski on Fox’s halftime show. “Hey, this might be his last game as a Dallas Cowboy.”

NFL STATS CENTRAL: The latest NFL scores, schedules, odds, stats and more.

Gronk, who played nine seasons for the New England Patriots and won three Super Bowl rings with them, stopped short of invoking Belichick’s name three days after the legendary coach and franchise he led to dynastic glory mutually parted after 24 years. Yet such speculation had already sparked Thursday, when it was quite clear Belichick was embarking on free agency, not retirement.

“I look forward to coming back here,” he said at his departure conference in Foxborough, Mass., without taking questions.

“But, at this time, we're going to move on. I look forward, am excited for the future.”

Meanwhile, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones must assess his present and recent past before charting a path forward.

“This seems like the most painful (loss) because we all had such great expectations, and we had hopes for this team and thought that we were aligned and in great shape,” Jones said after getting whacked by the Pack with little further insight into his future plans.

McCarthy has led Dallas to three consecutive 12-5 regular seasons, including a pair of NFC East crowns, high cotton in almost any NFL city.

Almost any.

Yet his Cowboys have also experienced three gut-wrenching playoff ousters, two to the San Francisco 49ers and one to the San Francisco 49ers Midwest – the Packers’ wrenching of Dallas’ guts closer to a complete evisceration. McCarthy's team didn't look ready to play – not the first time it's happened in postseason to his Cowboys and antithetical to Belichick's Patriots – a primary consideration when it comes to weighing whether he's back for a fifth season in the Metroplex.

Jones, 81, is now 28 years removed from his most recent Super Bowl appearance. Same goes for the Cowboys’ last berth in an NFC championship game. Prior to Sunday, he could at least cling to the narrative of progress after Dallas reached the divisional round a year ago before falling to the Niners. But that all evaporated when his team – which had been riding a 16-game winning streak at home in Jerry World – was steamrolled by a Packers team featuring the youngest roster in the league and a quarterback, Jordan Love, making his first-ever postseason start.

Conversely? Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, coming off perhaps his finest season – including second-team All-Pro recognition and a league-best 36 TD passes – saw his playoff record shrink to 2-5. Adding insult to insults, Dallas become the first team to lose to a seventh-seeded opponent since the postseason field expanded in 2020.

The “Cowboy Way”? Apparently, sadly for them.

Now Jones must gauge his options. A dozen regular-season wins a year are nice, but it’s far less than he and his multitudinous fan base expect. And, though he tried to subsequently walk it back, even Jones was hedging on McCarthy in Week 18 even as the Cowboys donned their division title caps and t-shirts.

“I think of what he’s done and that we’ve put ourselves in this position over these last three years, I think that does speak for itself. We’ve got a lot of football left and no small part thanks to Mike,” Jones said following a 38-10 thrashing of the Washington Commanders.

"We’ll see how each game goes.”

Now we have.

"What I had planned to do was be with (McCarthy) tomorrow going over how we played today and getting ready for the coming week," Jones said Sunday per The Athletic. "That’s what was on the agenda. Tomorrow, my agenda will be to dismiss the team.”

But while league observers, analysts, reporters, X/Twitter and just about everyone else are connecting the lines from the Lone Star State to the lone head coach with six Lombardi Trophies on his résumé – eight if you count Belichick’s two rings while running the New York Giants legendary defense in 1986 and 1990 – let’s pause for a hot minute and remember that any hypothetical Jones-Belichick marriage would most definitely have to be a mutual arrangement. Maybe even a one-sided one.

In this moment, assuming he’s ready to pivot from McCarthy, it might seem like Jones needs Belichick. That doesn’t necessarily mean BB needs Jones.

Belichick, 71, clearly wants to continue coaching, and that will require a new locale to compile the 15 additional wins he needs to surpass Hall of Famer Don Shula’s all-time record (347). It also means a destination where he could get that seventh Super Bowl victory, allowing him to pull even again with Tom Brady ... at the very least. And that might mean the Cowboys, who could offer the GDP of a small country as financial enticement. It might also mean the Atlanta Falcons. Or the Los Angeles Chargers. Or the Seattle Seahawks. Or another surprise job that might come open (Philadelphia Eagles, anyone?). Perhaps Belichick even takes a year off to recharge, reset, re-evaluate and wait for a situation more to his liking.

But, sure, Dallas is theoretically a highly attractive post. There’s a very good, if definitely not elite, quarterback in place with Prescott. All-Pro wideout CeeDee Lamb is among the best at his position, even if that was hardly apparent Sunday. Pass rusher Micah Parsons might be the league’s most-feared defender. DaRon Bland and Trevon Diggs, assuming he comes back completely from a torn ACL, may form the league’s top cornerback tandem in 2024.

But isn’t Belichick sure to have significant misgivings?

He’s known Jones for decades and surely sees a deft businessman similar to his longtime boss in New England, Robert Kraft. And, like the Patriots, the Cowboys are very much a high-profile family venture. But Jones is completely hands-on in a way Kraft never really has been. The constant radio appearances. The frequent postgame meetings with reporters, win or lose. The heavy involvement with player acquisition, whether it’s free agency or the draft. Belichick knows his NFL mentor, Bill Parcells, chafed under Jones and only lasted four years with nary a postseason win.

Then there’s the culture of being “America’s Team,” which carries what’s almost certainly the brightest spotlight in American team sports. This is an organization that wants to be in the headlines. Wants to be on “Hard Knocks.” Wants its players featured in national commercials. Parsons is now a podcaster. And the talent is here to (almost) justify all the attention and expectations.

Belichick? He basically wants one voice beyond the pre-programmed message hardwired into the locker room. And one focus – between the lines.

Speaking of which, the Cowboys can’t run the ball, especially not when they need to. They play break-but-don’t-bend defense. Good as Prescott was in 2023 – and has been for stretches of his career – he can’t win the big one and has too often made glaring mistakes in the biggest games.

"It feels like you're there putting on a performance as a player instead of being a football player. It feels like so theatrical, and that's what I think gets lost in all of this," said Hall of Fame defensive end Michael Strahan on Fox's postgame show.

"Let the players play football. They're football players, not Broadway performers."

“Do Your Job?” Not so much. And instilling those three words that Belichick and his teams have lived by for nearly a quarter-century is hardly something that happens overnight – and that might be especially true in North Texas given the litany of distractions that have historically swirled around the Cowboys.

So, regardless of where Jones lands, that could mean this isn’t the job for Belichick.

Follow USA TODAY Sports' Nate Davis on X, formerly Twitter @ByNateDavis.