THE SHAME GAME
It is easier to find ways to lose than win. And, over the past couple of seasons, it often seems Jason Garrett has stuffed the Cowboys playbook with Ivy League strategies for defeat. Yesterday, the coordinator's offensive modifier took on an unfortunate double meaning. Fans and critics are right to question his final two, goal-line calls that doomed Dallas to a 10-17 heart-breaker in Denver. While there were countless penalties and questionable calls prior to these tactical miscues and some horrendous clock management — at the end of both halves — the team still had a chance to tie (and thus win), with seconds to go and the best-possible field position to do so. They tried, they failed. Worse, they looked foolish doing so. They ought be ashamed. Clearly some are. But Shame is fickle: it inspires some and conquers others.
A loss is a loss no matter how it's accrued. No one credits the 2008 Detroit Lions for any moral victories. They were winless. That's what was recorded and that's what we'll remember. And as that hapless team proved just as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did decades earlier, losing can be habit-forming. But why? Is it lack of talent or a troubled mindset, an unconscious indulgence of "negative visualization?"
The Cowboys are confounding because they don't lose all the time, just half the time. They have proven their ferocious inconsistency over the past 24 games. Their 12-12 tally during this stretch suggesting they are no more capable of stringing together back-to-back victories, than a praying mantis's mate might score a second date. So, it is reasonable to assume they have enough ability to win but not the will power to execute when they must.
The Dallas defense improves weekly, fueled, I suspect, by Keith Brooking whose post-game comments reflect a positive response to Shame. Despite his personal, on-field success, he recognizes that he and his teammates must still do more. Practice harder. Play harder. Accept nothing but the desired results. He did not celebrate his fourth-down run stuff with the press, he focused on the plays that slipped away and how to insure they won't happen again. He hounded the Broncos from sideline to sideline, hurdling some to make tackles no one would have blamed him had he missed. (Wouldn't you love to hear Anthony Spencer state a similar desire to refocus this week or acknowledge his uncanny capacity for the near-miss big play?)
But its tough to blame the 'Boys' defense. Considering the presumed firepower of the offense, Dallas should still have been able to win. Thus, we turn to an offensive unit which could score only one touchdown while handing seven points right back to the opponents when Tony Romo coughed up the ball on a blind-side hit that everyone felt coming but him. It has become as easy to pick apart the quarterback as it is for Champ Bailey to pick him off... and this warranted criticism may itself be the root of Romo's infuriating play under pressure. If anything, he puts too much on himself. He's begun to hear voices (like Roy Williams may begin hearing footsteps after having been hung out mid-field in the fourth quarter). Jason Witten has alluded to his buddy's internalization of defeat and if you revisit his reaction to the Seattle Slip, it seems clear that he takes it all very personally. Then, when he attempts to play it off — as he did so last year, reacting to the season-ending loss to the Eagles with an oratorial ineptitude matched only by Miss South Carolina in 2007 — he is chastised more harshly. (Trust that I believe, deservedly so.) In all the off-season chatter about leadership, he overlooked the most important element that it is not so much what you say as what you do. The answers don't matter, the attitude does. Romo is so concerned about making the right choices — whether when addressing reporters or reading defenses — that he is disassembling the very traits that made him successful in his first season. He is an instinctive player who is allowing Shame to change him rather than charge him.
Jason Garrett is victim of his self-regard as well. Originally touted as a boy-genius, only to have the title stripped after last year's late-season meltdowns, the OC's become pre-occupied with restoring his rep rather than doing whatever it may take to win. How else to explain his bull-headed goal-line play-calling against both the Broncos and, a week earlier, the Panthers? Versus Carolina, a single run would have sufficed. Versus Denver, give Witten or Williams a shot at the game-tying touchdown. (If Roy's the anointed number one receiver, he ought be on the field no matter how much his ribs might ache.) Garrett seems intent on proving his smarts when all Dallas need do is dominate. As much as I admired the finesse of Tom Landry's teams, at some point, at the goal line, brute force tops brain power. Garrett is allowing Shame — and his professional stock value, perhaps — to dictate strategy rather than Garrett allowing his best players a chance to dictate the outcomes in squeakers.
I empathize. I have experienced Shame on levels multiplied by a "nurtured" self-loathing and a wavering sense of worth. In good times, my ego overrides Shame's heckling. I hear its jeers as challenges. That's easy. But in crisis, as I am now, as the Cowboys are now, Shame's critiques are amplified and I am felled, temporarily paralyzed, incapable of drowning out the droning self-doubt it conjures. I will try to follow Keith Brooking's example. No, I will follow his example. First, I will disavow the disclaimer "try to," permitting myself only the possibility of betterment. I will place my failures behind me more rapidly and resolutely, refusing to succumb to the grief they have and can inflict. Instead, I will acknowledge these mistakes but refuse to repeat them, judging myself only on my record from here on out.
Today is the first day of the rest of the season. The Cowboys can choose to linger on their disappointing play and replicate these results week in and week out. Or, they can make a contract with themselves to forbid the Shame of under-achievement to sabotage their playoff potential. On any given Sunday, Dallas can beat any other team in the league. On any given Sunday, Shame, handled wisely, can help them win.
(Note that this is part four of an ongoing series. To read Lesson #1, please click here.)
