The MAGA Football League: The Dallas Cowboys, Pushed Or Not?

Until about 48 hours ago, I was ready, within the next 30-60 days, to tell you my predictions for the NFL Football Season:

Dallas over Green Bay for the NFC title
New England over Oakland for the AFC crown

New England wins the Super Bowl, and, as of right now, predicting undefeated.

There's still time to change those predictions (and there's a very real reason I'm thinking NE goes 19-0 too), and this article is not about New England.

No, we're talking the Dallas Drugboys again.

As I posted below, the NFL has suspended a number of players for drug offenses for a number of games already in the upcoming season.

For the second year in a row, the Dallas Cowboys enter training camp having to pay the league a significant fine (last year, media reports (and the NFL itself) put the fine in excess of $250,000 for three players suspended) under the Club Remittance Policy, in which a team is monetarily penalized for having three or more players suspended.

The NFL no longer releases the information, but the last information I had indicated that the league's formula for team penalties was the following:

• For three players, the fine is 20% of the third player's lost salary.
• For a fourth suspension, the fine is 25% of the fourth player's.
• For anything further, the fine is 30% of the lost salary of any fifth and succeeding player.

This obviously does not matter a whit to the Dallas Cowboys.

For the second season in a row, June 30 rolls around and the Cowboys already have to cut a check to the league for excessive suspensions.

Since the day after Super Bowl 50, only 17 months...  The NFL has had to suspend five Cowboys a total of nine times, including throwing two out of the league for the "life suspension" of a strike-three which would mean minimum one season and they have to apply for reinstatement:

• February 19, 2016:  Randy Gregory Strike One, 4 games.
• June 30, 2016:  DeMarcus Lawrence, 4 games
• June 30, 2016:  Rolando McClain Strike Two, 10 games (Basically exactly one year after his Strike One, which was July 2, 2015).
• September 29, 2016:   Randy Gregory Strike Two, 10 games.  He still had two games to serve on the initial suspension, this one tacked on 10 more.
• November 20, 2016:  Rolando McClain Strike Three, 16 more games.
• December 2, 2016:  Rolando McClain Banned For Life for Strike Four
• January 5, 2017:  After only playing two games of the 2016 season, Randy Gregory gets Strike Three and will sit this entire season.
• April 21, 2017:  Shaquelle Evans, 4 games
• June 28, 2017:  David Irving, 4 games

This does NOT count any potential Ezekiel Elliot suspension -- and it is now believed by at least one NFL insider (Adan Schefter) that he WILL be.  The issue is still ongoing, and Schefter basically spoke on a Sirius XM fantasy-football show this week that he believed Elliot would sit.

Each week of a suspension would cost Elliot almost $100,000, with the team on the hook for an additional $30,000 or so payment.

This ALSO does NOT take into account any potential NFL discipline for Damien Wilson, charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon outside the Dallas soccer stadium on July 4th. Allegedly backed his truck into a tailgater, then flashed his gun at two people who didn't like it!

This ALSO does NOT count Nolan Carroll, arrested in late-May for DWI.

Before we consider any further failed drug-tests or anything else that happens in the over two months before the season begins, the Dallas Cowboys may be playing the first four or so weeks of next year with up to SEVEN suspended players.

It's time, NFL.

It's time to get off your ass and actually do what you say.

You're not going to do it (see below), but it's time to inflict unprecedented penalties on the Cowboys, Jerry Jones, and possibly Director of Player Personnel Stephen Jones.

If I were Commissioner, this would've been announced Wednesday:

• As owner and GM, Jerry Jones is banned from all NFL operations for one year.  He must apply for reinstatement, and if he fails, the team must be put on the market to new ownership.
• The same penalty goes to Stephen Jones and to any party responsible for the enforcement of the NFL drug policy with respect to it's players on the Cowboys.
• Multi-million dollar fine to the franchise.
• A minimum of one lost first-round draft pick and multiple further draft picks (which may include more first-rounders) over the course of the next several drafts.
• And if the situation isn't cleaned up, expulsion from playoff consideration until it is.

None of this is going to happen.

Why?

Because of the one reason I cannot walk up and say the Cowboys will no longer be pushed.

MAGA.  Donald Trump.

If there is a greater piece of evidence out there that the NFL is rapidly becoming The MAGA Football League, the ratings slide, blackballing of Colin Kaepernick, and the ratings slide are great indications that the largest-growing NFL demographic is White Republicans.

I do know this:  I'm pretty much of the indication that Dallas either wins the NFC (11-5 or so because of all the suspensions) or goes 6-10 or worse.

There's no in-between here.  Stay tuned -- this will probably be the biggest ongoing story of the season.