Folks, I hate to say I told you so, but I did. I simply couldn’t see a way that the Cowboys would be NFC Championship Game bound this season. I felt that there were far too many superior teams than the Cowboys and the game against Favre and Company proved it. Make no mistake about it: the Cowboys were the inferior team on the field. It was a complete role reversal from last week’s game. The Eagles had no answer for us and the Cowboys had no answer for the Vikings.
Apologies for the delay in this week’s edition, Cowboy fans. Saturday evening started with a celebration of Cowboys postseason success and then from Sunday to now I have been laughing at the expense of Southern Cal, rival to my Alma Mater, as Pete Carroll jumped ship, rumors of NCAA sanctions were around the bend, and then last night it climaxed as they hired Lane Kiffin out of nowhere. To say my research for this week’s edition has been slightly sidetracked with these recent developments is a gross understatement.
The Cowboys definitely made me eat my words this past Sunday. The Cowboys were flat out dominant against the Eagles in round two of their three round bout. For the most part, the worries I had last week about the lack of execution that plagued the Washington effort were not to be found this time around. Last week I felt like the Cowboys were fortunate to have a great defensive effort. This week I felt like they could not be stopped.
Cowboys fans, we all got a very nice Christmas present from our ‘Boys in the form of a sweep of the Redskins, a shutout, and, most importantly, a playoff berth. While we can’t be quite sure exactly where the Cowboys will eventually settle in the post-season picture, one thing is for certain: this series has been given an extra week of life!
I’m sure many Cowboys fans are asking what I have been ever since I saw the clock hit 0:00 Saturday night: “Where has THAT been all season?!”
This game was completely unlike any other we’ve seen all season. The Cowboys not only scored on their first drive for the first time this season, but also their second drive as well as their opening drive of the second half. Make no mistake about it, the offense put on one of their most dominate performances all season.
So what was different this time around and what has been missing the past couple of weeks? It’s time to break this offensive performance down and find out why.
Cowboy fans, I hope every last one of you have braced yourselves and taken cover for the wonderful storm that has hit us all. Another December game, another December loss and now the Cowboys can do no better than 2-2 this month, and that would mean knocking off undefeated New Orleans this Saturday.
Things do not look good.
Sunday’s game is easily the most confusing and frustrating game that I have broken down all season. Throughout the year, it has been fairly easy to point out the offensive shortcomings that have caused this team to fail in their losses. However, as we all will soon see in this week’s breakdown, the story is not so clear at all. The theories, axioms, and recipes for success that I have hung my hat on all season have been shaken to the core.
It’s always great to have a solid offensive performance to write about. Despite the fact that this effort was against the lowly Raiders, the Cowboys did exactly what they should and that is completely dominate a lesser opponent. Time to break this one down and see just why things went so well this time around.
For the past two weeks, I have been doing a double take on my calendar and making sure the month does indeed read November and not December. For the second week in a row the Cowboys again only managed to place 7 points on the board, but thankfully we happened to be playing a team that wanted to lose worse than we did.
Once again, I am searching for answers on just who is to blame for this week’s offensive disaster. Last week, I placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Garrett going beyond pass-happy. Did history repeat itself once again this week?
All good things must come to an end, and the Cowboys fantastic play on offense the past few weeks has done just that. For all intents and purposes, the Cowboys were basically shut out as Roy Williams late TD was most definitely an irrelevant occurrence against a defense that was playing incredibly soft. Everything that went wrong seemingly did. Romo looked awful and seemed to be on the turf more than he did on the ground, receivers were dropping passes, and turnovers absolutely killed the Cowboys.
Buckle up everyone – this won’t be pretty.
