Lightened load on Cowboy bandwagon

By Os Davis  |   Wednesday, December 13, 2006  |  Comments( 5 )

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That jostling you just felt? That was either the Dallas Cowboys' confidence shaking or the result of thousands suddenly jumping off the bandwagon in the wake of a "pretty good licking" at the hands of the New Orleans Saints. The accompanying whooshing sound to go along with that bump is caused by the Cowboys' precipitous drop from the power polls after reaching mighty heights of No. 2 on the arm of superman Tony Romo and the run-crushing 'D'.

Today, we're living in the wake of another NFL weekend and oh, how the journalists turned. The Romomania has halted quickly, as the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram's Jennifer Floyd Engel suspects her own case of "Romo-maybia." Would Tom Brady ever be given this sort of treatment in New England?

Engel's piece is entitled "Has a team without a pass rush made it to the Super Bowl?" and offers a heavy, cynical dissection of just how ridiculously weak the Cowboy 'D' secretly is. Engel is shaken in her belief that the Cowboys are a "Super Bowl threat." (Gee, I guess the 14 percent of RealFootball365 readers who stated Dallas had the NFL's top defensive unit should be embarrassed...)

Over at the Dallas Morning-News, columnist Frank Luksa has got an unnamed NFL scout agreeing that the Dallas 'D' is overrated and that "everyone in the league knows you can throw behind the Dallas safeties." Luksa himself questions "whether New Orleans exposed the Cowboys as a postseason contending fraud."

Whoa.

And to think en masse we were ready to hand these guys the NFC side of the field in Miami.

Pundits are now in a flurry to call this Sunday's game at the Atlanta Falcons a "statement game," a "crucial game," even a "must-win game." The situation, if not the competition, would be daunting for a lesser team. Romo, seeking to rebound from what some professional hyperbolizers are calling "the worst game of his career," stated post-game that "we'll see what we're made of now."

The ever-quotable Bill Parcells, after bleeding his personal thesaurus dry of synonyms for "bad" while describing the "pretty good licking," ultimately concluded with "This game's a humbling game. This could happen to anybody."

Indeed, have those turning from Dallas' run forgotten that parity rules in the NFL, circa 2006? And what's more that the Cowboys find themselves lucky enough to be playing in the NFC where no truly dominant force has emerged? So Dallas lost to New Orleans. New Orleans has lost to the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers have also lost to the Minnesota Vikings, who have lost to the Chicago Bears but have beaten the Seattle Seahawks, who have just now returned to full force ... et cetera. The fact is, this NFC is wider open than it has been in years; plus, if the No. 6 Pittsburgh Steelers can go all the way against the slate they drew last year, Romo and the boys can, too.

Well, some still believe.

Said Terrell Owens in the post-game, echoing the familiar sentiments of his teammates, "I don't think confidence is lost ... by anybody."

Anybody, that is, except for fickle followers.

RealFootball365.com: Whether you're on the Dallas Cowboys bandwagon or off.
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's...
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CommentsComments: 5  |  Sign Up  View all comments
No.1
fr8ttrain		10:32 AM
12/13/2006
All you gotta do is make the playoffs, every team is one bad day away from getting beat, Bears, Saints, Cowboys and Seahawks. I...
No.2
T		12:06 PM
12/13/2006
You know I just dont get some people, one minute they're all over Dallas because of their "5" game winning streak and now because...
No.3
fr8ttrain		09:50 AM
12/14/2006
T, 41-17 huh? You should just be happy with a win. I wouldn't expect Atlanta to roll over, they are at home and fighting for a...
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