Michael Irvin goes full homer with wild Cowboys comparison on First Take

We all know that Dallas Cowboys legend Michael Irvin is a homer. There’s no hiding or denying that he loves this team, even when they disappoint. Take that homer mentality and add it to appearing on one of the most opinionated shows on television — ESPN’s “First Take — and you’ll get some wild quotes.

Even though the main character on the show is Stephen A. Smith, a famed Cowboys hater, Irvin often makes appearances on the show to banter back and forth with his pal.

In Smith’s first episode back in a few weeks, the ESPN personality wasted no time trashing the Cowboys for their penalty-riddled performance in their first preseason game against the Broncos. Smith said that first game alone was enough to hit the panic button. Dallas had a whopping 17 penalties for 129 yards after head coach Mike McCarthy vowed that penalties would be the No. 1 focus during the 2022 offseason.

Penalties weren’t the only issue in the preseason game. The backup quarterbacks struggled. Wide receivers who did well in Oxnard couldn’t seem to gel in a game environment. The offensive line struggled massively.

But if you ask the Hall of Famer, penalties seem to be the only problem for this team. In fact, he went so far as to say that if the Cowboys can get fewer flags, they could go undefeated in 2022. Talk about a homer hot take.

"“If the Dallas Cowboys clean up these penalties, they will be chasing the [undefeated] 1972 Miami Dolphins. When you got the No. 1 offense, clean up these penalties, they will be chasing the 1972 Dolphins. Did I say something crazy?”"

Michael Irvin claims that if the Cowboys clean up the penalty issues, they can go undefeated and win it all like the 1972 Miami Dolphins

There’s a lot to process here. For starters, the 1972 Miami Dolphins are the only team in NFL history to achieve a perfect season. In only their third year as a franchise in the NFL, the team went undefeated and went on to win the Super Bowl.

It seems highly unfair to assume that the Cowboys are going to win the Super Bowl in 2022, let alone have an undefeated season. Irvin seems to be forgetting about all of the other issues this team is facing beyond the flag concerns. They have only one starting WR from the previous year for at least Week 1, likely more. The swing tackle position is unclaimed. Ezekiel Elliott is on the decline.

But to entertain to the Cowboys legend, let’s say penalties were the only issue. Starting the preseason with 17 penalties doesn’t seem like a good start. You can blame the flag concerns on second and third-string players, but the reality is that no NFL team had more than 12 flags in their first preseason game. Most had far below that.

Irvin being a “team player” and always rooting for the Cowboys isn’t new or shocking. But him thinking that simply cleaning up penalties will automatically make them the second team ever to have a perfect season is overkill.