I Bleed B&G;1761114 said:
Why is it so hard to acknowledge the fact that your guys' precious Cowboys have played against the NFL's worst teams on your way to this padded 8-1 start?
So far in my journeys, I have come across one realistic Cowboys fan who says that he will not get excited, nor crown Dallas the best team, until you guys prove it by beating quality opposition. What normally happens when I ask this question is Cowboys fans bring up my Skins barely beating this team, squeaking by that team, and narrowly escaping defeat at the hands of so and so. THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION! We Commanders fans know our team has much to work on, we also know that being 5-4 at this point after having so many major injuries is quite an accomplishment. Not to mention the fact that while we came close in many games, we were 3 quarters from being 8-1 ourselves EVEN without half our OLine, a 100% RB, no #1 WR (Moss hurt all season), and confusion amongst Gibbs and Saunders as to who runs the offense.
I did not come to your site to "troll" or whatever you guys call it when an outside fan disagrees with your views. Im simply here to see how the other half thinks, and to have my one question finally answered by an unbiased, non-homer, 100% REAL football fan and not some downhome good ol' boy who refuses to recognize the league's worst and softest schedule to this point.
I await your intelligent answers, all others will be ignored.
I'll try to answer this as best I can, but obviously I won't be 100% right, and a lot of what I say is based off of opinion.
The reason I believe my (our) Cowboys are a quality this team this year is from watching the games. For the most part, in today's NFL any team can beat another team on "any given sunday." So to me it's not who you beat, but how you beat them.
When I watch the Cowboys, they play well, and win convincingly. Of course there was the bills game, but the bills have ended up busting off quite a few wins since the game, and the cowboys managed to win despite all the turnovers. The fact that no team had ever won a game when giving up two interception returns for touchdowns and a kick (or was it punt) return for touchdown speaks volumes of how impressive that win was. Now I accept that people will say we were lucky, but in all my years of playing sports I've come to see that the good teams always seem to get "lucky."
The cowboys did hang with the patriots. They spotted them 21 early and easy, and managed to climb back in to the game and lead the game a little less than midway through the third quarter. I never felt that the cowboys were going to win that game, but no other team aside from the colts has played as well against the patriots as the cowboys did.
Furthermore, the strength of schedule (if it is calculated in the way I am going to assume it is) is statistically flawed. By using opponents win loss in SoS (especially through a little more than half the season) you are setting yourself up for inaccuracy immediately because the cowboys are 8 and 1. This means that right away opponents SoS takes a hit due to the 8 losses and 1 win. Let's say the cowboys were 5-4. This would make our opponents 130 - 126 (edited to add: based on your numbers). I don't know where that ranks on the SoS, or if I've even done the math right, but you see what I mean.
For the sake of argument I will take back what I said about any team beating any other team on any given sunday yadda yadda yadda, and I will tell you if the teams we have faced are good or not (remember this is my opinion). Giants - meh. Could be a playoff team, but they have holes on that team. Solid, but inconsistent at the very least. Dolphins - absolute joke. Chicago - garbage, but when we faced them they were hyped up as the top dogs. Not that it matters though, because they're still garbage. Rams - laughable. Buffalo - actually a quality team, that will hang in most games, but they won't make the playoffs. Young nucleus of talented players, but they ahve a lot of injuries, holes, and you don't know which bills team you will see week in and week out. New England - duh they are good. Vikings - they are a quarterback and (maybe) a posession receiver from being a good team. As it stands they can beat a lot of teams with Adrian Peterson alone. Eagles - clearly not what they used to be. I think any division game is hard though. Giants again - read above.
So do with that what you will.
For the lazy:
I love football. I'd love to coach some day, and I believe I will. When I watch the cowboys, I can see they are a good team. I don't know if they will go to the super bowl, but they have a better than average chance of representing the NFC in the super bowl this year. If you don't think so, then you haven't watched the games. Of course, they can lose in the playoffs after a great season then it's over...nothing anyone can do about it.
The cowboys have imposed their will on almost every team they've played and have consistently made phenomenal adjustments at half time.
