This week, all week long, we're taking a brutal look at each of the teams in the NFC East, in detail. The first target will be the Dallas Cowboys, whose fans experienced the 2017 season in the following five stages:

Oh, and then they lost the ability to bail out of any losing debate with Eagles fans by resorting to, "You don't have any rings." Tough year.

To note, we will not be talking about the positives of any of the Eagles' NFC East rivals, because, well, that's no fun. This will be 100 percent vitriolic. And yes, we'll try to torch the Eagles as well (though I'm not quite sure how yet).

1) The Cowboys have nothing at receiver

There was once a time when former star wide receiver Dez Bryant was thought of as one of the five best players at his position in the NFL. Now? Not so much.



By releasing Bryant, the Cowboys saved $8.5 million against the cap in 2018, which in my view was a no-brainer decision. And yet, they still managed to screw up that decision, as the timing of his release made no sense whatsoever for Dallas. There was no way in hell any team was trading for a declining player making that much money, who, oh by the way, also happens to be a colossal pain in the ass. So why wait? The Cowboys could have used that money, before, you know, free agency came and went, instead of in April.



The other downside of Bryant's release is that he'll count for $8 million in dead money in 2018, and the Cowboys are now left with the following at wide receiver:

Cowboys WRs 1 2 3 WR1 Allen Hurns Deonte Thompson Noah Brown WR2 Terrance Williams Michael Gallup Cedric Wilson Slot Cole Beasley

*It will also be interesting to see how the Cowboys misuse Tavon Austin, who is also on the roster.

While Bryant isn't the same receiver he once was, he was still the Cowboys' best receiver, and they don't have anything in the way of a player who can replace him (or at least anything close to what he was).



To his credit, at least Terrance Williams is trying to make up for the loss of Bryant's distractions off the field:



Meanwhile, Cole Beasley, who is coming off a season in which he averaged a horrendous 4.98 yards per target, is apparently launching a rap career.



I created the following gif just to watch while Cole raps:

2) They also have nothing at tight end

In previous Cowboys dumpster fires, we used to talk about how old Jason Witten was getting, and how old and damaged Tony Romo was.

Jimmy Kempski/PhillyVoice

Ah, memories. Both are now in the broadcast booth, and the Cowboys seemed completely unprepared for the end of Witten's career, which is crazy to me. Witten is 36 years old, and he has been in a steady decline for more than a half-decade:



Year Rec Yards YPC TD 2012 110 1039 9.4 3 2013 73 851 11.7 8 2014 64 703 11.0 5 2015 77 713 9.3 3 2016 69 673 9.8 3 2017 63 560 8.9 5



And yet, when Witten decided that he'd prefer to talk about the Cowboys' disappointments from now on instead of living through them, the team was basically like, "Wait, what?!?"

While Witten was indeed in decline, he was still far better than anything the Cowboys had at tight end. In fact, with Witten now gone, the Cowboys' tight ends have a combined nine career receptions. Nine!

Player Rec Yards YPC TD Geoff Swaim 9 94 10.4 0 Blake Jarwin 0 0 0.0 0 Rico Gathers 0 0 0.0 0 Dalton Schultz 0 0 0.0 0 David Wells 0 0 0.0 0



As you can see, all nine of those receptions were made by fourth year player Geoff Swaim. Here are Swaim's yearly numbers:

Year Rec Yards YPC TD 2015 1 0 0.0 0 2016 6 69 11.5 0 2017 2 25 12.5 0 TOTAL 9 94 10.4 0



Can Geoff Swaim be the next Jason Witten?

One thing I'll give Cowboys fans credit for is their supreme delusion to buy into literally anything. I mean, some were willing to believe that Greg Hardy was a victim and not a vile human being, ffs.

Surely, they can get on board with Swaim being a viable starter if someone were to put together a "highlight reel," complete with the following three key components:

Motivational rap song in the background.

The same decent play being shown multiple times from different angles, and in slow motion.

Stats that are presented to look impressive, but aren't.



As a gift to those delusional fans nationwide, I have made that highlight reel for you:



After viewing his nine career catches, I fully expect Black Friday-type lines outside of Dick's Sporting Goods stores across the country tomorrow morning of Cowboys fans desperate to buy Geoff Swaim jerseys, as well as other assorted Geoff Swaim accessories and keepsakes.

3) Dak Prescott wasn't good when he needed to carry the offense

In 2016, Prescott had EVERYTHING going for him.

His OL still had Ronald Leary and Doug Free, who were better players at LG and RT than Jonathan Cooper and La'el Collins, respectively.

His three best offensive linemen stayed improbably healthy.

Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, and (especially) Cole Beasley were better players than what they became in 2017.

Ezekiel Elliott's immaturity hadn't caught up with him yet.



As a result, Dak was able to guide a ship that didn't have much in the way of holes, taking home NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year honors.

In 2017, the Prescott faced some adversity:

The Cowboys lost two offensive line starters in Leary and Free.

Tyron Smith got hurt for a few games, and the offense couldn't adapt.

Bryant, Witten, and Beasley all declined to varying degrees.

Elliott's immaturity caught up with him.



The result -- Dak was nowhere near as good, and did not look like anything resembling an elite quarterback capable of putting a franchise on his back. He finished the season with an 86.6 QB rating (certainly not the end-all, be all statistical metric, but still also not misleading in Dak's case), sandwiched between guys like Tyrod Taylor and Andy Dalton.