IRVING, Texas - Whoops, there it is.
The Dallas Cowboys are human after all.
There would be no stirring comeback this Sunday afternoon. There would be no fortuitous bounce here at Texas Stadium. There would be no continuation of the Tony Romo Magical Mystery Tour. And, there would be no defensive or special teams bail-out before 63,777 mostly disbelieving people at the last home game of the 2007 regular season.
The Cowboys got beat. Got beat bad. The score says Eagles 10, Cowboys 6, but really, it was 17-6, save Eagles sure-to-be Pro Bowl running back Brian Westbrook taking a knee at the 1-yard line, giving up a sure touchdown to drain the clock. Evidently he knew about these Cowboys miraculous resurrections in what had been a lark of a season.
Still, it wasn't that close.
The Cowboys were dreadful. They couldn't pass, and when they could, they couldn't catch. They couldn't run, thus showing a disdain to even try. At times, they seemed so discombobulated they couldn't even get lined up properly - let alone run proper routes.
They just couldn't make a play to save themselves.
This was a long-time coming, and evidently the Cowboys have not been granted immunity from some higher being as has been suggested from throwing in a clunker this season. Those happen to everyone, and most more than once. Why else do you think no team has gone 16-0 during a regular season in NFL history?
Now, I realize the sky is falling, that the feeling out there is the Cowboys will never win another game, never score another touchdown, never gain another first down . . . that this is the beginning of the end - again. Just happens every December.
Why, if you can't beat the erstwhile 5-8 Eagles coming in slogging through a three-game losing streak, who can you beat?
"Well, we hadn't had this feeling in a while," said Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips, who didn't seem inclined to take his 12-2 squad out to the woodshed.
You don't normally do that with the NFC East Division champions, and a team, despite itself on this day, which had clinched a first-round bye in the NFC playoffs just minutes before this late afternoon game started. Or the team which owns a tiebreaker advantage over the equally 12-2 Green Bay Packers for home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs with two games to go.
Now, we can be hysterical about this loss, and some will. We can also say we can detect a trend, since the Cowboys needed a stirring comeback just last Sunday to defeat the Detroit Lions by one, and some surely will. And we can start wringing our hands over teams having figured out Jason Garrett's offense, and without a doubt, some will.
That's what you do when trying to explain the inexplicable in a nice, tidy summary, and especially if you want to be the first one on the block to pull the fire alarm, giving no care to false alarms.
But look, me, I'll wait until next week if this happens again, or maybe even the week after that, if this happens again. This is one game, one really bad game.
And you know what, not to be an I-told-you-so, but did I not issue the warning late last week? Did I not warn against thinking about how to get to Arizona and which team was going to hire Jason Garrett as head coach and just who the Cowboys were going to draft with their first picks next year? That there still were games to play, and that these Eagles weren't going to let a 38-17 loss to the Cowboys more than a month ago discourage them?
Hey, there is a reason why the Cowboys have never won more than 13 regular-season games in their history, one which includes eight trips to the Super Bowl, five Lombardi Trophies sitting at The Ranch and 14 trips to the NFC title game. Great teams have run through here previously, you know.
Come on, there is reason why the Cowboys never had scored at least 24 points in as many as 13 straight games in the same season as they had going into this game, the previous high all of six. Please let that sink in.
There is a reason why no Cowboys quarterback had ever thrown touchdown passes in 17 consecutive games as Romo had done, all that coming to an end on Sunday. There is a reason no
Cowboys wide receiver ever has caught more than the 14 touchdown passes Terrell Owens has caught so far this season. And there is a reason only one other NFL head coach in his first season with a club had ever gotten off to the 12-1 start Wade Phillips had.
This stuff the Cowboys had been producing just doesn't happen every other season.
To understand how bad Sunday was, is to understand how utterly remarkable the first 13 games had been. Which means they had been really remarkable because Sunday was really, really bad, the first vibe coming on the second Cowboys' offensive play when Romo badly overthrew a wide-open Owens for what would have been an 85-yard touchdown pass. Told you hitting those open receivers is not nearly as easy as Romo had been making it appear.
Look, this was the first time in 54 regular-season games the Cowboys failed to score a touchdown; the 240 total yards were the fewest since Game 15 of last year, when they were held to 201 by, uh, these same Eagles; the 187 yards passing was the third-lowest total of the season; and the 53 rushing was the fewest this year, and get this, the fewest since the third game of the 2004 season - a span of 59 games.
Wonder now who should get credit for putting this team together?
There is a lesson, though, former Cowboys head coach Bill Parcells preached, and it was one about this being a team game, that if you are relying so heavily on one player and that one player should happen to have a bad day at the office, well, you've got no recourse.
The Cowboys had no recourse.
Tony Romo had a bad day at the office. Nearly atrocious. He completed a season-low 13 passes on 36 throws for just 214 yards, was sacked a season-high four times, was intercepted three times and finished with a career-low 22.2 QB rating - the lowest by a Cowboys quarterback since Vinny Testaverde's 18.9 in that 2004 season 30-10 wipeout by Baltimore.
Romo was just off, and this was far before he suffered that thumb contusion on his right hand in the third quarter that, no matter his protestations or those of the head coach, affected his throws and ability to grip the ball. He continually missed open receivers. He was late on throws. He had the ball knocked out of his hands.
But he was gracious in defeat, and sans excuses, trying to ignore his sore thumb even if the ice wrap on his right hand became club-ish.
"They did a great job, obviously, and put a lot of defensive pressure on us," said Romo, whose X-rays on the thumb were negative, suggesting more of a contusion. "We didn't handle it as well as we've been. It's frustrating because I played poorly, and I wished I had played better, and I take the blame for some of it.
"We made way too many mental mistakes tonight. This was probably our highest mental errors for our teams, offensively at least, and their defense did an outstanding job."
See, look, quarterbacks just don't regularly throw down 100 rating efficiencies every week, and Romo had in an incredible 10 of 13 games, along with seven straight - something only three other quarterbacks had ever done in NFL history. They don't regularly throw for 300 yards seven times in a season as Romo has, or at least no previous Cowboys quarterback did, the most the previous 47 years standing at three.
So with Romo off, the offensive line couldn't be. The front five was, and matters grew worse when center Andre Gurode left in the third quarter with a sprained knee. The Cowboys then needed to run the ball. They couldn't, for if not for Romo's 16-yard scramble they would have finished with 37 rushing yards. The wide receivers needed to be perfect. They weren't, catching just four passes, Owens dropping one and from the sounds of things, the receivers not exactly all running the proper routes.
So with Romo off, the defense needed to step way up. The Cowboys' defense nearly did, holding the Eagles to but 10 points until that final possession when another touchdown would have been scored if not for Westbrook's smarts. Problem is, that 10 was four too many points. And special teams, not darn thing.
As Parcells said, this ain't tennis out here.
This is a team game, and no matter what you think, Tony Romo is not the Lone Ranger.
"It's hard to win games in the NFL and we tell our guys that every week - it's hard," said Garrett, knowing no matter the season-high 38 points the Eagles gave up to the Cowboys the first time around, they were the NFL's 10th-ranked defense coming into the game. "Always understand it's always going to be a full day's work when you go out there . . . .
The Dallas Cowboys are human after all.
There would be no stirring comeback this Sunday afternoon. There would be no fortuitous bounce here at Texas Stadium. There would be no continuation of the Tony Romo Magical Mystery Tour. And, there would be no defensive or special teams bail-out before 63,777 mostly disbelieving people at the last home game of the 2007 regular season.
The Cowboys got beat. Got beat bad. The score says Eagles 10, Cowboys 6, but really, it was 17-6, save Eagles sure-to-be Pro Bowl running back Brian Westbrook taking a knee at the 1-yard line, giving up a sure touchdown to drain the clock. Evidently he knew about these Cowboys miraculous resurrections in what had been a lark of a season.
Still, it wasn't that close.
The Cowboys were dreadful. They couldn't pass, and when they could, they couldn't catch. They couldn't run, thus showing a disdain to even try. At times, they seemed so discombobulated they couldn't even get lined up properly - let alone run proper routes.
They just couldn't make a play to save themselves.
This was a long-time coming, and evidently the Cowboys have not been granted immunity from some higher being as has been suggested from throwing in a clunker this season. Those happen to everyone, and most more than once. Why else do you think no team has gone 16-0 during a regular season in NFL history?
Now, I realize the sky is falling, that the feeling out there is the Cowboys will never win another game, never score another touchdown, never gain another first down . . . that this is the beginning of the end - again. Just happens every December.
Why, if you can't beat the erstwhile 5-8 Eagles coming in slogging through a three-game losing streak, who can you beat?
"Well, we hadn't had this feeling in a while," said Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips, who didn't seem inclined to take his 12-2 squad out to the woodshed.
You don't normally do that with the NFC East Division champions, and a team, despite itself on this day, which had clinched a first-round bye in the NFC playoffs just minutes before this late afternoon game started. Or the team which owns a tiebreaker advantage over the equally 12-2 Green Bay Packers for home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs with two games to go.
Now, we can be hysterical about this loss, and some will. We can also say we can detect a trend, since the Cowboys needed a stirring comeback just last Sunday to defeat the Detroit Lions by one, and some surely will. And we can start wringing our hands over teams having figured out Jason Garrett's offense, and without a doubt, some will.
That's what you do when trying to explain the inexplicable in a nice, tidy summary, and especially if you want to be the first one on the block to pull the fire alarm, giving no care to false alarms.
But look, me, I'll wait until next week if this happens again, or maybe even the week after that, if this happens again. This is one game, one really bad game.
And you know what, not to be an I-told-you-so, but did I not issue the warning late last week? Did I not warn against thinking about how to get to Arizona and which team was going to hire Jason Garrett as head coach and just who the Cowboys were going to draft with their first picks next year? That there still were games to play, and that these Eagles weren't going to let a 38-17 loss to the Cowboys more than a month ago discourage them?
Hey, there is a reason why the Cowboys have never won more than 13 regular-season games in their history, one which includes eight trips to the Super Bowl, five Lombardi Trophies sitting at The Ranch and 14 trips to the NFC title game. Great teams have run through here previously, you know.
Come on, there is reason why the Cowboys never had scored at least 24 points in as many as 13 straight games in the same season as they had going into this game, the previous high all of six. Please let that sink in.
There is a reason why no Cowboys quarterback had ever thrown touchdown passes in 17 consecutive games as Romo had done, all that coming to an end on Sunday. There is a reason no
Cowboys wide receiver ever has caught more than the 14 touchdown passes Terrell Owens has caught so far this season. And there is a reason only one other NFL head coach in his first season with a club had ever gotten off to the 12-1 start Wade Phillips had.
This stuff the Cowboys had been producing just doesn't happen every other season.
To understand how bad Sunday was, is to understand how utterly remarkable the first 13 games had been. Which means they had been really remarkable because Sunday was really, really bad, the first vibe coming on the second Cowboys' offensive play when Romo badly overthrew a wide-open Owens for what would have been an 85-yard touchdown pass. Told you hitting those open receivers is not nearly as easy as Romo had been making it appear.
Look, this was the first time in 54 regular-season games the Cowboys failed to score a touchdown; the 240 total yards were the fewest since Game 15 of last year, when they were held to 201 by, uh, these same Eagles; the 187 yards passing was the third-lowest total of the season; and the 53 rushing was the fewest this year, and get this, the fewest since the third game of the 2004 season - a span of 59 games.
Wonder now who should get credit for putting this team together?
There is a lesson, though, former Cowboys head coach Bill Parcells preached, and it was one about this being a team game, that if you are relying so heavily on one player and that one player should happen to have a bad day at the office, well, you've got no recourse.
The Cowboys had no recourse.
Tony Romo had a bad day at the office. Nearly atrocious. He completed a season-low 13 passes on 36 throws for just 214 yards, was sacked a season-high four times, was intercepted three times and finished with a career-low 22.2 QB rating - the lowest by a Cowboys quarterback since Vinny Testaverde's 18.9 in that 2004 season 30-10 wipeout by Baltimore.
Romo was just off, and this was far before he suffered that thumb contusion on his right hand in the third quarter that, no matter his protestations or those of the head coach, affected his throws and ability to grip the ball. He continually missed open receivers. He was late on throws. He had the ball knocked out of his hands.
But he was gracious in defeat, and sans excuses, trying to ignore his sore thumb even if the ice wrap on his right hand became club-ish.
"They did a great job, obviously, and put a lot of defensive pressure on us," said Romo, whose X-rays on the thumb were negative, suggesting more of a contusion. "We didn't handle it as well as we've been. It's frustrating because I played poorly, and I wished I had played better, and I take the blame for some of it.
"We made way too many mental mistakes tonight. This was probably our highest mental errors for our teams, offensively at least, and their defense did an outstanding job."
See, look, quarterbacks just don't regularly throw down 100 rating efficiencies every week, and Romo had in an incredible 10 of 13 games, along with seven straight - something only three other quarterbacks had ever done in NFL history. They don't regularly throw for 300 yards seven times in a season as Romo has, or at least no previous Cowboys quarterback did, the most the previous 47 years standing at three.
So with Romo off, the offensive line couldn't be. The front five was, and matters grew worse when center Andre Gurode left in the third quarter with a sprained knee. The Cowboys then needed to run the ball. They couldn't, for if not for Romo's 16-yard scramble they would have finished with 37 rushing yards. The wide receivers needed to be perfect. They weren't, catching just four passes, Owens dropping one and from the sounds of things, the receivers not exactly all running the proper routes.
So with Romo off, the defense needed to step way up. The Cowboys' defense nearly did, holding the Eagles to but 10 points until that final possession when another touchdown would have been scored if not for Westbrook's smarts. Problem is, that 10 was four too many points. And special teams, not darn thing.
As Parcells said, this ain't tennis out here.
This is a team game, and no matter what you think, Tony Romo is not the Lone Ranger.
"It's hard to win games in the NFL and we tell our guys that every week - it's hard," said Garrett, knowing no matter the season-high 38 points the Eagles gave up to the Cowboys the first time around, they were the NFL's 10th-ranked defense coming into the game. "Always understand it's always going to be a full day's work when you go out there . . . .
