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ARLINGTON, Texas – Given the state they call home, their unself-conscious embracing of a national branding and the cavernous stadium where they stage their Sunday spectacles, the Dallas Cowboys exist in a world that can rightfully be described as larger than life.
Whatever goes down in the House That Jerry Jones Built, you can bet your last silver dollar that it’ll be big.
That’s why it was so surreal Sunday evening after the Cowboys’ latest December disappointment, a 20-17 defeat to the San Diego Chargers, to hear frustrated owner Jones, embattled coach Wade Phillips and many of his players insist that this was merely a small setback with limited big-picture significance.
Right, and the Alamo was just a superficial siege followed by a scrappy skirmish.
To be fair, there’s no shame in getting beaten by the ascending Chargers (10-3), who’ve won eight consecutive games and can close in on a first-round bye with a home victory over the Cincinnati Bengals next Sunday. And it’s true that this was the first time the ‘Boys (8-5) have lost consecutive games in ’09, and they would make the playoffs if the season were to end today.
But if you don’t see the signs that Dallas’ season is in serious danger of slipping away, you must be wearing lenses far more obfuscating than the 3-D glasses they passed out to the 90,552 fans at Cowboys Stadium Sunday. No matter the dimension, America’s Team is tough to watch right now – and with a showdown at the Superdome against the 13-0 New Orleans Saints next Saturday night, it appears headed for the NFL’s equivalent of a Black Hole.
“This is a bitter pill to swallow,” Jones conceded afterward in a crowded, unannounced session with reporters outside the team’s locker room. “We know what we’ve got ahead of us. But this was not terminal to our goals, relative to what we can do this year.”
Perhaps not, but the Cowboys might want to get their affairs in order. Given their recent history, the death watch in Big D is in full force.
Even veteran linebacker Keith Brooking(notes) was resigned to that reality after succumbing to San Diego. Brooking, who joined the Cowboys in ’09 after 11 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, had adamantly argued before Sunday’s game that the franchise’s past December failings should not be used against the current team as it headed into a harrowing stretch drive.
Following Sunday’s setback – which included a scary injury to the team’s best player, DeMarcus Ware(notes), that landed the star pass rusher in the hospital with a neck sprain – Brooking couldn’t muster a whole lot of defiance.
“It is what it is,” Brooking said of Dallas’ 10th defeat in its last 15 December games, a period that coincides with Tony Romo’s(notes) run as the team’s starting quarterback. “We’re 0-2 in December right now. So you guys can write all you want or say whatever you want on TV. We’ve teed it up for you.”
Yep, and now they’re going to get whacked around like Tiger.
That this hard-fought game came down to a few poorly executed plays – and that it took place against this particular opponent – made the outcome even more excruciating for the Cowboys.
If Dallas is known for its December fades – the Cowboys are 18-33 in games after Dec. 1 since 1996, and Phillips is 3-8 – San Diego is its North Polar opposite. The jollier-than-Santa Chargers are 16-0 in the month since Philip Rivers(notes) became their starting quarterback, including an 11-0 mark in the Norv Turner era.
The inevitable Turner comparisons that surfaced Sunday made things especially uncomfortable for Phillips, given the two coaches’ intertwined histories. A brief recap: When Bill Parcells resigned after the 2006 season, Jones strongly considered hiring Turner, the team’s offensive coordinator from 1991-93, as his head coach. Largely because of his regard for newly named offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, the owner instead offered the job to Phillips – a surprising hire that ultimately led to Marty Schottenheimer’s ouster in San Diego, which hired Turner as his replacement.
So it wasn’t just that Phillips lost to Turner on Sunday – it was the deeper meaning that could be read into certain situations.
For one thing, the Chargers were exceedingly prepared for their opponent.
“Early in the game Philip was calling off some of our blitzes, yelling out the patterns that we run,” Brooking told me afterward. “Yeah, it was frustrating – he knew what we were going to do before we did it. Eventually, we adjusted.”
Defensively, the Chargers weren’t especially baffled, either. Though Romo played well – he completed 19 of 30 passes for 249 yards, with two touchdowns and no interceptions – Phillips and Garrett took the ball out of his hands at a key juncture in the second quarter and paid for it dearly.
Trailing 10-3 with four minutes remaining in the first half, the Cowboys had first-and-goal at the 4-yard line and gave the ball to halfback Marion Barber(notes) on four consecutive plays. He gained three yards on the first carry but was held short of the goal line on each of his successive attempts from the 1.
The only strategic wrinkle came on fourth down, when Barber lined up as a fullback in front of Felix Jones(notes) before taking a quick handoff. It fooled nobody, and while Chargers linebacker Tim Dobbins(notes) (who was in on the final three goal-line stuffs) may not be the world’s foremost authority on schematic evaluation, he basically dissed the Dallas braintrust after the game.
“I don’t know what they were thinking, but after the second time you’ve gotta think, ‘Don’t run that play anymore,’ ” Dobbins told reporters. “I don’t know if they watched film or what. In our mind, we knew he wasn’t blocking. We knew he had to get the ball. … Everybody knows that; everybody in the stands knew that. We knew it was going to be a flip or a dive, one or the other. I don’t know what they were thinking.”
Ouch, Wade. Ouch, Jason.
Jones did his best to take the heat off his coaches, saying he had no problem with the calls. “Not one bit,” Jones insisted. “You might say that the ballgame was [decided] right there. Well, I would’ve bet the ballgame [that we’d score on one of] four tries right there, the way we were running ball.”
To be accurate, the game wasn’t solely decided on that sequence. The Cowboys regained possession at the San Diego 27 on a terrific, leaping interception by cornerback Terence Newman(notes) with 1:46 to go in the half, but the Chargers held them to three yards on three plays, and Nick Folk(notes) missed a 42-yard field goal.
Dallas tied the game at 10 on the final play of the third quarter when Romo hit Miles Austin(notes) on a six-yard touchdown pass, completing an 11-play, 99-yard drive. On the ensuing drive, Rivers dropped back on second-and-7 from the Cowboys’ 48 and threw an incompletion to Vincent Jackson(notes) – and then things got truly frightening.
Ware, as he was charging around left tackle Marcus McNeill(notes), jammed his helmet into the body of right tackle Brandyn Dombrowski(notes) and slumped to the turf. After a long delay he was strapped to a board and taken off the field. He had full movement in his extremities and eased fans’ fears by making thumbs-up signals and waving with both hands, but he was taken to a local hospital for tests.
When the game resumed McNeill was whistled for a false start, setting up a third-and-12. Turner’s call (four receivers running vertical patterns) clearly stumped the Cowboys: Rivers floated a gorgeous, 39-yard pass to Jackson on the left sideline behind Newman and well out of safety Gerald Sensabaugh’s(notes) range.
“They ran something that put some of our guys in an awkward situation,” Newman said. “They got one.”
On the next play Rivers hit tight end Antonio Gates(notes) for a 14-yard score. The Chargers forced a punt, launched another long drive and put away the game on Nate Kaeding’s(notes) 34-yard field goal with 1:56 remaining.
By night’s end the Cowboys trailed the Eagles by a game in the NFC East and held a one-game advantage over the Giants (7-6, but with a tiebreaker over Dallas) for the final wild-card spot. Jones, who said late last month that a strong performance down the stretch could help Phillips earn a contract extension – the coach’s deal expires after this season, though Jones can exercise a one-year option – wouldn’t bite on the obvious, opposite conclusion that a negative outcome would suggest.
“I’m disappointed we haven’t been able to win in the playoffs … that we haven’t played better in December,” Jones said. “But I have in no way written Wade Phillips off. That’s a reach to say that Wade is coaching for his job. There’s no one, specific goal I have in mind in relation to that – not even a playoffs thing.”
Playoffs? Is that Jim Mora I hear in the background?
Draw your own conclusions: The Cowboys’ rigorous road to the postseason begins Saturday in New Orleans, continues in Maryland against the Commanders and concludes at home against the Eagles, who last year ended Dallas’ playoff dreams with a 44-6 thrashing in the final game.
Clearly, the post-traumatic stress provoked by such flameouts is responsible for the pervasive belief that the Cowboys are once again mired in December doldrums, a line of thinking that Newman attempted to squelch.
“Who gives a [expletive] about December?” he asked. “The only time you have to worry about December is if you’re trying to make the playoffs, which we are. But who cares what month it is? It’s about the weekends. We’ve got three left, and we’ll see what happens.”
Perhaps they’ll fool us and reverse their recent history, but try as they might to downplay Sunday’s defeat, the Cowboys look like a lost cause. Consider that Jones took it upon himself to address his players after Sunday’s game, using the rampant criticism he and coach Jimmy Johnson endured after he bought the franchise in 1989 as a lesson in the power of overcoming adversity.
As the owner spoke, Phillips undoubtedly nodded along and made his best “Yes, Jerry” face. The coach has less than a week to get his team back on the horse – and to figure out a way to defeat a New Orleans team that no one has beaten since last December.
“We don’t have time to worry about a hangover,” Brooking said. “We’ve got to take some Excedrin and get over it real quick. We’re gonna find out what this team’s about in the next three weeks.”
Good luck getting over this Texas-sized headache, boys.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_y...slug=ms-morningrush121409&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
Whatever goes down in the House That Jerry Jones Built, you can bet your last silver dollar that it’ll be big.
That’s why it was so surreal Sunday evening after the Cowboys’ latest December disappointment, a 20-17 defeat to the San Diego Chargers, to hear frustrated owner Jones, embattled coach Wade Phillips and many of his players insist that this was merely a small setback with limited big-picture significance.
Right, and the Alamo was just a superficial siege followed by a scrappy skirmish.
To be fair, there’s no shame in getting beaten by the ascending Chargers (10-3), who’ve won eight consecutive games and can close in on a first-round bye with a home victory over the Cincinnati Bengals next Sunday. And it’s true that this was the first time the ‘Boys (8-5) have lost consecutive games in ’09, and they would make the playoffs if the season were to end today.
But if you don’t see the signs that Dallas’ season is in serious danger of slipping away, you must be wearing lenses far more obfuscating than the 3-D glasses they passed out to the 90,552 fans at Cowboys Stadium Sunday. No matter the dimension, America’s Team is tough to watch right now – and with a showdown at the Superdome against the 13-0 New Orleans Saints next Saturday night, it appears headed for the NFL’s equivalent of a Black Hole.
“This is a bitter pill to swallow,” Jones conceded afterward in a crowded, unannounced session with reporters outside the team’s locker room. “We know what we’ve got ahead of us. But this was not terminal to our goals, relative to what we can do this year.”
Perhaps not, but the Cowboys might want to get their affairs in order. Given their recent history, the death watch in Big D is in full force.
Even veteran linebacker Keith Brooking(notes) was resigned to that reality after succumbing to San Diego. Brooking, who joined the Cowboys in ’09 after 11 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, had adamantly argued before Sunday’s game that the franchise’s past December failings should not be used against the current team as it headed into a harrowing stretch drive.
Following Sunday’s setback – which included a scary injury to the team’s best player, DeMarcus Ware(notes), that landed the star pass rusher in the hospital with a neck sprain – Brooking couldn’t muster a whole lot of defiance.
“It is what it is,” Brooking said of Dallas’ 10th defeat in its last 15 December games, a period that coincides with Tony Romo’s(notes) run as the team’s starting quarterback. “We’re 0-2 in December right now. So you guys can write all you want or say whatever you want on TV. We’ve teed it up for you.”
Yep, and now they’re going to get whacked around like Tiger.
That this hard-fought game came down to a few poorly executed plays – and that it took place against this particular opponent – made the outcome even more excruciating for the Cowboys.
If Dallas is known for its December fades – the Cowboys are 18-33 in games after Dec. 1 since 1996, and Phillips is 3-8 – San Diego is its North Polar opposite. The jollier-than-Santa Chargers are 16-0 in the month since Philip Rivers(notes) became their starting quarterback, including an 11-0 mark in the Norv Turner era.
The inevitable Turner comparisons that surfaced Sunday made things especially uncomfortable for Phillips, given the two coaches’ intertwined histories. A brief recap: When Bill Parcells resigned after the 2006 season, Jones strongly considered hiring Turner, the team’s offensive coordinator from 1991-93, as his head coach. Largely because of his regard for newly named offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, the owner instead offered the job to Phillips – a surprising hire that ultimately led to Marty Schottenheimer’s ouster in San Diego, which hired Turner as his replacement.
So it wasn’t just that Phillips lost to Turner on Sunday – it was the deeper meaning that could be read into certain situations.
For one thing, the Chargers were exceedingly prepared for their opponent.
“Early in the game Philip was calling off some of our blitzes, yelling out the patterns that we run,” Brooking told me afterward. “Yeah, it was frustrating – he knew what we were going to do before we did it. Eventually, we adjusted.”
Defensively, the Chargers weren’t especially baffled, either. Though Romo played well – he completed 19 of 30 passes for 249 yards, with two touchdowns and no interceptions – Phillips and Garrett took the ball out of his hands at a key juncture in the second quarter and paid for it dearly.
Trailing 10-3 with four minutes remaining in the first half, the Cowboys had first-and-goal at the 4-yard line and gave the ball to halfback Marion Barber(notes) on four consecutive plays. He gained three yards on the first carry but was held short of the goal line on each of his successive attempts from the 1.
The only strategic wrinkle came on fourth down, when Barber lined up as a fullback in front of Felix Jones(notes) before taking a quick handoff. It fooled nobody, and while Chargers linebacker Tim Dobbins(notes) (who was in on the final three goal-line stuffs) may not be the world’s foremost authority on schematic evaluation, he basically dissed the Dallas braintrust after the game.
“I don’t know what they were thinking, but after the second time you’ve gotta think, ‘Don’t run that play anymore,’ ” Dobbins told reporters. “I don’t know if they watched film or what. In our mind, we knew he wasn’t blocking. We knew he had to get the ball. … Everybody knows that; everybody in the stands knew that. We knew it was going to be a flip or a dive, one or the other. I don’t know what they were thinking.”
Ouch, Wade. Ouch, Jason.
Jones did his best to take the heat off his coaches, saying he had no problem with the calls. “Not one bit,” Jones insisted. “You might say that the ballgame was [decided] right there. Well, I would’ve bet the ballgame [that we’d score on one of] four tries right there, the way we were running ball.”
To be accurate, the game wasn’t solely decided on that sequence. The Cowboys regained possession at the San Diego 27 on a terrific, leaping interception by cornerback Terence Newman(notes) with 1:46 to go in the half, but the Chargers held them to three yards on three plays, and Nick Folk(notes) missed a 42-yard field goal.
Dallas tied the game at 10 on the final play of the third quarter when Romo hit Miles Austin(notes) on a six-yard touchdown pass, completing an 11-play, 99-yard drive. On the ensuing drive, Rivers dropped back on second-and-7 from the Cowboys’ 48 and threw an incompletion to Vincent Jackson(notes) – and then things got truly frightening.
Ware, as he was charging around left tackle Marcus McNeill(notes), jammed his helmet into the body of right tackle Brandyn Dombrowski(notes) and slumped to the turf. After a long delay he was strapped to a board and taken off the field. He had full movement in his extremities and eased fans’ fears by making thumbs-up signals and waving with both hands, but he was taken to a local hospital for tests.
When the game resumed McNeill was whistled for a false start, setting up a third-and-12. Turner’s call (four receivers running vertical patterns) clearly stumped the Cowboys: Rivers floated a gorgeous, 39-yard pass to Jackson on the left sideline behind Newman and well out of safety Gerald Sensabaugh’s(notes) range.
“They ran something that put some of our guys in an awkward situation,” Newman said. “They got one.”
On the next play Rivers hit tight end Antonio Gates(notes) for a 14-yard score. The Chargers forced a punt, launched another long drive and put away the game on Nate Kaeding’s(notes) 34-yard field goal with 1:56 remaining.
By night’s end the Cowboys trailed the Eagles by a game in the NFC East and held a one-game advantage over the Giants (7-6, but with a tiebreaker over Dallas) for the final wild-card spot. Jones, who said late last month that a strong performance down the stretch could help Phillips earn a contract extension – the coach’s deal expires after this season, though Jones can exercise a one-year option – wouldn’t bite on the obvious, opposite conclusion that a negative outcome would suggest.
“I’m disappointed we haven’t been able to win in the playoffs … that we haven’t played better in December,” Jones said. “But I have in no way written Wade Phillips off. That’s a reach to say that Wade is coaching for his job. There’s no one, specific goal I have in mind in relation to that – not even a playoffs thing.”
Playoffs? Is that Jim Mora I hear in the background?
Draw your own conclusions: The Cowboys’ rigorous road to the postseason begins Saturday in New Orleans, continues in Maryland against the Commanders and concludes at home against the Eagles, who last year ended Dallas’ playoff dreams with a 44-6 thrashing in the final game.
Clearly, the post-traumatic stress provoked by such flameouts is responsible for the pervasive belief that the Cowboys are once again mired in December doldrums, a line of thinking that Newman attempted to squelch.
“Who gives a [expletive] about December?” he asked. “The only time you have to worry about December is if you’re trying to make the playoffs, which we are. But who cares what month it is? It’s about the weekends. We’ve got three left, and we’ll see what happens.”
Perhaps they’ll fool us and reverse their recent history, but try as they might to downplay Sunday’s defeat, the Cowboys look like a lost cause. Consider that Jones took it upon himself to address his players after Sunday’s game, using the rampant criticism he and coach Jimmy Johnson endured after he bought the franchise in 1989 as a lesson in the power of overcoming adversity.
As the owner spoke, Phillips undoubtedly nodded along and made his best “Yes, Jerry” face. The coach has less than a week to get his team back on the horse – and to figure out a way to defeat a New Orleans team that no one has beaten since last December.
“We don’t have time to worry about a hangover,” Brooking said. “We’ve got to take some Excedrin and get over it real quick. We’re gonna find out what this team’s about in the next three weeks.”
Good luck getting over this Texas-sized headache, boys.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_y...slug=ms-morningrush121409&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
