Don’t Worry Dallas Cowboys Fans
I had a good time watching the game last night. It’s been a long time since I was able to watch my Dallas Cowboys play and not be on edge, rocking back and forth pulling my hair. Instead, as the game went on, a very calm feeling over came me, a knowing…refreshing really. When you can watch your team play without any connection to the outcome, everything slows down and becomes very clear. With that clarity comes peace, not bliss, but peace.
It was amazing to be able to analyze the players performances while in this state. The Cowboys defense played slow, so slow they were often whiffing at air after an Eagle ran by. Now, I’m not really sure that our Cowboys played poorly. It seemed more like the Philadelphia Eagles just played way better, to a man.
Now, I didn’t start out this calm. After the Eagles easily and methodically marched down the field for a touchdown on their first possession, (the first one Dallas has given up in the first quarter all season) and then we punted on our first possession, I tweeted: ‘Dallas had better make some adjustments on Defense and Offense right away or this is going to be a long and ugly night’. I was on edge and a little worried at that point. A common feeling while watching my Cowboys.
Then, during the second play of the Eagles’ second possession I remember Demarcus Ware looking completely lost. Demarcus Ware, the best football player on this Dallas Cowboys team, looked lost? Then, as that sunk in, at that very moment the worry left my being. I accepted our fate and slipped into that calm neutral spectator state. It’s a similar feeling you get when the Harlem Globe Trotters come to town and play an exhibition with the local high school team. You watch with the knowledge that they are putting on a show, but their won’t be any competition or resistance.
As I said in my prediction for this game, this was a game that would set the tone, the course these Cowboys will take the rest of the season. These players had to decide what kind of team they want to be. Well, I was wrong about the score (understatement) but right about the team.
But don’t worry Cowboys fans! Its good to get outplayed that definitively on both sides of the ball sometimes. Because everything slows down and becomes clear, expectation disappears, and then you see what kind of football team you really have.
Now for my Points and Observations:
-Tony Romo throws behind his receivers (especially Jason Witten) a lot more than I realized before.
-Dallas’ Defenders seemed frozen on many occasions, waiting for the play to come to them. This inevitably added yards for Philly on those plays. Maybe they didn’t want to look like fools tackling air where an Eagles player was just a second before.
-Did Dan Bailey play every position at least once in this game? I’m pretty sure he did.
-DeMarco Murray seemed to get yards when he ran. Why did we abandon the run when the game got away from us? We could have controlled the clock a little better and maybe kept the Eagles under 30.
-Something I’ve never seen in a football game before. Every Cowboys player, on Offense and Defense, had their hands up in an ‘I don’t know whats happening’ pose on the sidelines to their position coaches. Should professional football players be doing that? Should we be concerned by this?
-Most teams Defense can take away/neutralize one of the opposing team’s players. Like the Rams took away Miles Austin last week. The Eagles were able to take away two: Dez Bryant and Miles Austin. Guess that’s why they have three highly payed Corners.
-I often talk about music playing in the back ground as the Dallas Cowboys play. Well, the Circus music seems to have returned.
-The Cowboys have the talent to play straight up on teams, don’t they? Yet they still keep trying to be cute and complicated, which isn’t working.
-Like I said yesterday, the Philadelphia Eagles are a very talented team and it looks like they turned a corner last night… I still hate them. Always will.
-Before we take too much stock in this good old-fashioned whoopin’ we just took, keep in mind that we wiped the field with the St. Louis Rams last week and then they turned around this week and wiped their field with the clearly better New Orleans Saints.
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