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Over the bye week, Cassel was named the starting quarterback over Brandon Weeden, the logical endpoint of the trade the Cowboys made shortly after Romo's injury. You don't give up a fifth-round pick for a guy you don't think can contribute, and three poor starts by Weeden was reason enough to see if Cassel was ready to contribute.
Michael, whom the Cowboys traded for even earlier than Cassel, was given plenty of press as a potential starter. He told David Moore of the Dallas Morning News he was "clueless" about how many carries the hype would actually translate into.
The reality: Cassel's three-interception performance was no better than anything Weeden had offered, and Michael had just six touches for 20 total yards. The Cowboys gained just 227 yards through the air, and despite a strong performance from the running back committee in general, could muster only 20 points against a mediocre Giants defense.
The Cowboys dropped their fourth straight game since losing Romo, and now sit at 2-4. The Giants have somehow clawed above .500, (for now) leading the woeful NFC East with a 4-3 record. Thanks to a miraculous Washington comeback victory, the Cowboys are now looking up at a division they dominated in 2014.
As grim as the standings are, though, Cowboys fans saw reason to believe this team that just dropped a winnable game can get back in the hunt once it has its best weapons back.
The positive headline for the Cowboys was the production of tailback Darren McFadden, the once-electrifying runner who turned in a 60-minute performance for the first time in years. McFadden toted the rock an impressive 29 times for 152 yards and a touchdown.
The Cowboys offensive line put a hat on a hat and dominated like they should have been doing all year long. Remember the notion that the loss of DeMarco Murray wouldn't hurt because any back would be able to roll people behind that front? For the first time, that sounded plausible: Michael, technical starter Joseph Randle and receiver Lucky Whitehead combined for 77 yards on 11 carries.
As a team, then, the Cowboys gained 233 yards on 41 rushes, a sterling average of 5.7 yards per carry. Yet, despite dominating the Giants on the ground, they couldn't finish enough drives to make a difference.
Put that on Cassel.
The Cowboys took their first possession all the way down to the Giants' 12, but back-to-back incompletions on 2nd-and-3 and 3rd-and-3 forced a field goal. Their second possession ended when Cassel couldn't complete a pass on 3rd-and-4. They got a field goal out of their third drive, but mostly because they started on their own 40-yard line following an out-of-bounds kickoff.
When, on their fourth possession, Cassel zipped a pretty cross-field throw to Jason Witten for a gain of 35—and when McFadden ultimately punched it in at the end of the drive—it looked like maybe Cassel would be just good enough to tide the Cowboys over until their superstars came back. A divisional win over the Giants would keep the Cowboys in the thick of things, of course, and set the table for another win or two.
Six plays into the second half, though, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie reminded everyone why Cassel's on his third team in less than a year:
Rodgers-Cromartie's pick-six put the Giants on the front foot, and the Cowboys were on their heels the rest of the way.
On the very next drive, Cassel turned it over again. This time, it was an ill-advised moonball Giants safety Brandon Meriweather had all day to get underneath and pick off.
On the very next drive, Cassel turned it over again. This time, Rodgers-Cromartie read Cassel's locked-on eyes and jumped in front of Brice Butler for a picture-perfect pick.
Credit Cassel with a solid drive and two great boundary throws on his next possession; Devin Street's toe-dragging touchdown leveled the score at 20 and seemingly put McFadden and company in position to overcome Cassel's mistakes. Instead, former Cowboy Dwayne Harris took the ensuing kickoff back 100 yards for a touchdown, putting the Giants up by the eventual final score.
The question is no longer whether Cassel is an upgrade over Weeden; he isn't. Nor is it questioned whether the Cowboys can win without Romo and Bryant; they can't.
"If you're asking me if I'm confident Matt Cassel can help us win several of the next ballgames," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told Mark Maske of the Washington Post, "I don't know that." Instead, Jones issued a proclamation about Romo's targeted return, which ESPN's Adam Schefter first reported, then contradicted based on NFL rules:
Bryant, hopefully bandied about as a possibility to come back this week, is not far away. Yet, whether he comes back full speed next week against the Seattle Seahawks, the following week against the Philadelphia Eagles or any time after that, the Cowboys face a huge deficit they'll need both Bryant and Romo to climb out of.
The Cowboys now sit 2.5 games behind the Giants, and surrendered a potentially decisive head-to-head tiebreaker with today's loss. If Jones' boys can't scrape together a single win until Romo gets back, they'll be a wretched 2-7, and will need to win at least six of the final seven games to have a prayer of making the playoffs.
Even with Romo and Bryant, can the Cowboys pull that off against an end-of-season slate that includes the Miami Dolphins, Carolina Panthers, Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and Buffalo Bills? If McFadden keeps running like that, the offensive line keeps blocking like that, Romo is Romo and Bryant is Bryant... well, the answer's not necessarily no.
No matter what happens—even if the Cowboys pull off the all-but-impossible—Jones, son Stephen Jones and the rest of the Cowboys leadership will have to answer for going into an all-in season without a backup quarterback they could trust to win at least one game out of seven.
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