Dallas Cowboys: Is this latest loss a good or bad thing?

In the wake of an inexplicable effort, is the Dallas Cowboys team ready for prime-time or just another in a long line of disappointments waiting to happen.

Losses in the NFL are inevitable. Only two teams in the history of the league have gone undefeated. 99.9% of the time, you are going to experience the bitter taste of defeat at least once a year. If you’re a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, you have never made it through a season unscathed.

With that being said, Sunday’s loss to the Indianapolis Colts hurt. The result, a 23-0 defiling, felt like Bob Stone being thrown out in front of an assembly, naked, wet and embarrassed.

As a Dallas Cowboys fan, do we just look at this whooping like a blip on the radar? An aberration after five straight wins or an exposing of inevitable vulnerability?

If your name isn’t Ezekiel Elliott, you should be thoroughly embarrassed with the level of energy and effort you brought to Lucas Oil Stadium. Anyone who spent three plus hours watching the pathetic effort on display could see the Dallas Cowboys showed up expecting division champion hats and tees to be a mandatory reward.

Instead, another team who gets paid to play the game of football for a living showed up and brought reality to the doorstep. To make things exponentially worse, both Washington and Philadelphia did what they were not supposed to do… Win.

As of Tuesday, December 18, 2018, the Dallas Cowboys  have just a one game lead over both teams after an embarrassing, inexplicable effort on Sunday. Fifteen years in the making, Dallas looked up at the scoreboard and saw a goose egg beside their name.

We can get into the finger-pointing session that goes with this debacle at a later date. What matters most is that things got all that more interesting when it absolutely did not need too.

Look, the Indianapolis Colts are not an also ran. They have a top ten quarterback, a top shelf offensive line, a star wide receiver and a better than average defense.

This is all to say that they are a good team. Add in that they are fighting for their playoff lives and you can understand why Sunday mattered to them.

Why the Dallas Cowboys didn’t match that intensity is beyond you, me and anyone who claims this team as their own.

Yet, here we all are, experiencing one of the worst Monday/Tuesday morning hangovers one could imagine. The loss makes all of us re-evaluate everything. Is this loss a good thing or a bad thing?

If you listen to the Elliott, you’d absolutely believe it was positive. If you have had your fill of the ineptitude of this offense, you have other feelings. What’s real and what’s just air space filler?

Since 2005, only one Super Bowl winner did not experience a loss in December. Meanwhile, those who bleed silver and blue look at the 31st ranked red zone offense and the 26th best scoring offense look down at their nails and recognize nothing but jagged edges.

Are the 2018 Dallas Cowboys making a Super Bowl run? The answer to that is an affirmative maybe. They possess attributes which make them dangerous. Dallas owns a top three running back and an upper echelon defense.

There are teams that have rode this formula to ultimate success. Reality, however, slaps you in the face and points out the examples are few and far between. Ultimately, if Dallas is to ride this ride all the way to the top, more is necessary.

Missing ten plus tackles is not going to cut it. Sunday’s loss to the Colts represents the third time such an occurrence has happened. Come January, this defense is going to have to be every bit of what we think it is and not be so haphazard.

Quarterback Dak Prescott is going to, at least, be serviceable. A quarterback rating below eighty isn’t going to cut it. Showing up to any NFL facility expecting hats and t-shirts lauding your efforts don’t mean squat. Every week is a new opportunity to prove that you are the best of the best. Come with anything less and you can expect to brought back to Earth with a quickness.

At the end of the day, you choose your aisle. Do you sit in the row of pews that thinks this team is ready for ultimate success or are you waiting for the other shoe to drop?

We are soon to find out which side is the right choice. The truth lies somewhere in between. This team is absolutely capable of making noise in a conference where no one is running away with anything. It’s also capable of making you pull out every hair in your head and sitting in a corner of your room in the fetal position.

Welcome to a day in the life of a Dallas Cowboys supporter.