Chocolate Lab;2406194 said:
Yeah, we lost to the Skins and Cards. It happens. They're pretty good teams and we aren't perfect. Who knew?
And funny how Norm would never mention that the Giants scraped by the Bengals worse than we did. Or that we beat the Browns, Eagles, Packers, and Bucs.
People do need to lower their expectations, because expecting to stomp people every single week isn't reality in this NFL. No matter how much we want it to be, it just isn't.
And I thought we learned last year that being the best in October doesn't matter? Last year after nine games the Giants were 6-3, one game better than us... And they never lost their starting QB. I promise you they'd have been at least one game worse than that with the Pillsbury Throwboy in there.
Right on target Lab. Some fans get literally pissed when we don't dominate every team. They over-emphasize every penalty or bobble and act like the players should always play perfect football. That's impossible.
People tend to forget that even the Dallas super bowl teams had missed assignments and penalties. I watched one of the old games from our Triplets super bowl era the other day and there were plenty of penalties, incompletions, mistakes and a flat out lack of dominance. I was a little surprised because in my memory, those teams dominated everyone and always had perfect execution... always without penalties, of course. And I do think that is part of the reason people get so upset now. They forget that every team makes mistakes, has injuries, has off days and are far from perfect.
Other team's mistakes are glossed over by Dallas fans and the Cowboys faults are highlighted. That's typical for every team's fans, I'd bet. That doesn't mean that their view of reality and their expectations aren't skewed.
Those triplets era championship teams made plenty of mistakes. They just had enough talent and drive to overcome most of them. They did lose Aikman for a few games a couple of times... but in those instances, they had capable backups to come in and drive the bus well enough to get by.
Brad Johnson is so mind numbingly ineffective that I don't think any team could overcome his incompetencies. He alone was enough for us to lose the two games we lost with him at the helm. The defense simply overcame enough to win the Tampa Bay game.
People forget how much difference a QB can really make. Remember how this team looked completely different once Romo took over for Bledsoe? Like night and day. As a matter of fact, the Giants game that Romo first took over in wasn't that far removed from looking like last week's Giants game. The QB throwing "
holy ****" INT's and the rest of the team looking like "
why even try?" that day.
With Romo there, TO doesn't fumble because he wouldn't have been turned around catching a pass that was three feet behind him. The defense wouldn't have been trying to win by themselves and they would have had less mistakes and penalties. But most of all, the psychological impact that not having Romo had on the team is gigantic.
So, that pretty much explains our last two losses. The first two were barely losses and like others have said... I think we win against the cards if Romo doesn't break his finger. And IMO, the team was overconfident against Washington the first time around. It happens.
I remember the 90's Cowboys having days like that. I remember a bad Atlanta team just embarassing the Cowboys in 1992, I think. I remember a bad Rams team embarassing them. Both with Jimmy Johnson at the helm. All of his dicsipline didn't help prevent that.
It happens to that team and it has happened to this team. Fans don't remember that though... they just see today's mistakes and think that this team is a lost cause. It isn't. Getting Romo, et al back is going to make a world of difference.
[/rant]
