Dejavu all over again...

[MichaelWinicki]

OK...Business sucks.

The knee bounced back nicely.

And Sunday's result, especially living in NY (which you know nothing about), has been a real test of patience.

True... All Argonauts fans here.

 

[THUMPER]

to quote Yogi Berra.

For those of us who have been fans for a long time, this era of Cowboy football should feel oddly and uncomfortably, familiar.

Late 60's through 1970.

Two losses to Green Bay in the NFL Championship game. Both games ended in dramatic fashion. First one, Meredith tosses an INT into the endzone with the Cowboys in the wrong personnel group....Bob Hayes was on the field trying to block a LB. He wasn't supposed to be. The game ends at the Green Bay 6 yard line with the int into the endzone...final score 34-27

Next year....Dallas clearly had a better team than the Packers. The infamous Ice Bowl game....Dallas takes the lead toward the end of the game...approx 4 minutes left for Green Bay who had done NOTHING in the second half on offense. They proceed to march down the entire length of the field with the Cowboys playing soft on defense and leaving the flats open...the defense couldn't come up with a big play (sound familiar?). Dallas loses 21-17 on the last play of the game, a QB sneak by the Packers.

The next two season, a clearly inferior Cleveland team beat the Cowboys in the playoffs, 31-20, 38-14. The QB play in each game was awful for the Cowboys...so much so, it ultimately played a role in Meredith retiring.

Enter, Craig Morton...another guy who could not win the big game. The team gets to the Super Bowl totally on the strength of the defense...bad bounces, including the final pass off of Dan Reeves hands that lead to the Colt FG that won the game on the last play, the tipped ball to Mackey for a long TD...the Duane Thomas "fumble" on the goal line that wasn't a fumble....and one more heart breaking loss.

After each game, ya just sat there scratching your head, wondering "What on earth is going on here?"

Enter, Roger Staubach...and amazingly, with essentially the same roster, the team became a winner.

Hmmmmm....

This ain't a knock on Tony Romo...but man oh man, do these last years, dating back to the botched snap vs the Seahawks, feel familiar.

The biggest difference between then and now? It isn't the QB but the defense.

We had the best defense in the league from 1966-1971. In 1968-69 we gave up a TOTAL of 5 rushing TDs.. in 2 years!!! 2 in '68 and 3 in '69. We led the league in sacks almost every season during the late 60s-early 70s.

Every QB is going to make mistakes, it is up to the defense to cover up for those by stopping the other team and getting the ball back for the offense to have another chance. In that era our defense did just that. Go back and look at the games we won under Staubach and you will see he threw a lot of INTs early in his career but our defense was good enought to make stops and get the ball back for him.

How do you think we were playing from behind all those times anyway? It was usually because Staubach threw a pick or two. But our defense would make a huge stop, get the ball back for the offense and then Staubach worked his magic. Romo has proven that he can do the very same thing if our defense will do their job.

I posted a while ago how many horrible games Staubach had in the playoffs. Now don't get me wrong, Roger is my 2nd favorite Cowboys player ever, behind Bob Lilly, but he was far from perfect. In fact, he was a lot like Romo. He made big plays and he also made huge mistakes. The difference is that our defense was top-notch back then and it is far from that these days.

Romo has some things he needs to work on just like Roger did. Towards the end of Staubach's career he was a much better QB and made fewer mistakes. Tony will too, but we need our defense to do its job before we are going to win big games. So far it has let us down and everyone has blamed Romo.