Cowboys Fans Hit Panic Mode Over First Evaluation Game

The Dallas Cowboys had there first evaluation process in the loss to the San Diego Chargers on Thursday night.  With that loss, it seems that already the panic mode has already set in around the fans on Facebook and Twitter.  Well at least for the moment.  What the majority of Cowboys fans do not understand is that pre-season isn’t going to tell you a whole lot about the regular season, at least to a point.  This game with the Chargers will not set Dallas’ path for the entire NFL season.

The point of pre-season is to evaluate and see how players, especially rookies and newly acquired players, perform under game situation pressure.  Sometimes there stats look good and sometimes even though they look good in college they have issues becoming acclimated to the NFL.

During the game, Facebook feeds and groups blew up.  Excitement over newly acquired back up quarterback Brandon Weeden’s ability to maneuver the offense with very Romo-like qualities of escaping the pressure lit up my personal Facebook feed but all too quickly those feeds began to change with déjà vu and the horror of seeing the same defense Cowboys fans saw all last season.  Of course, it is disappointing to see your team lose in pre-season but as a seasoned Cowboys veteran fan, I’ve seen the Cowboys go undefeated in pre-season and have an awful year and yet have seen Dallas go 0-4 in pre-season and win a Super Bowl.

As the excitement turned to horror and the blow-out loss began to since in, people like Christian Quezada said on Facebook

"“That (he) expects the defense to be as bad if not worse than last season and 4-12 for the season.  Christian also goes onto say that he feels this season is going to be worse than I thought for me”"

Other fans in the Facebook group She Loves the Cowboys who actually attended the game chimed in.  Colleen Case had the best summary of what happened.

"“I wasn’t surprised that we lost the game against the Chargers. As much as I wanted us to do better, I wasn’t surprised to see that we didn’t. Like I said; don’t bet on any of the Preseason games. We knew that Tony Romo wasn’t going to play at all this game. I was surprised to see that none of our KEY players took the field. Witten and Dez were on the sidelines watching and trying to help out the younger players. Brandon Weeden did a good job, a lot better than I expected him to. Caleb Hanie just plain sucked, in fact we started yelling Dustin Vaughn, Vaughan, Vaughan, coach put the kid in….LOL. We even had the Charger fans yelling for Vaughan. Finally in the 4th quarter they put him in and he made many more plays and pass completions than Hanie. I hope Hanie does better in the future but if not I hope they release him and keep Vaughan. Romo was really talking to him every time he was on the sidelines. The defense really sucked but once again, there were players that weren’t on the field at all. We had a couple of defensive players who stood out, like Boatwright. So don’t be discouraged because of this game. This really was a game about let’s see how some of these guys will do. BTW their starters played for the first two quarters.”"

I think that is a great summary of how we, as Cowboys fans should take the San Diego game.  We still have three more pre-season games to go through and pre-season are just that, before the season.   It will be interesting to see how the favorites from last night progress or digress as they can do both.

So let’s not hit the panic button until this is week 6 in the regular season, and let’s just enjoy seeing the progression and finding out who gets cut.