These "nail biters" are not sustainable

JoeyBoy718

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There's no denying that come Sunday the Cowboys put on one heck of a show. It's been going on for years. In our down years we'll play up to the competition (see Denver last year), and in our good years we'll play down to the competition (see Houston this year).

Everybody wants to throw around the word "clutch" and point out statistics, but the truth is: when it comes down to the wire, it's really join a coin flip. Even the legends are around 50% in these situations. It makes sense when you think about it. It's really just a matter of luck and fortunate circumstances. Who has the ball last? Who turns it over? Who gets a bad call?

Sure, it sucks that we lost a game we could have won today. But then again, we won a game we maybe should have lost last week. You can blame it on the refs if you want, but when it's a 50/50 situation, it can really go either way.

And games do come down to these situations. All the time. I have to admit, they're exciting. But when you make a living playing with fire, you're gonna get burned. We could have won it all this year. We got the bad side of the coin today. But we got the good side quite a few times this year. We were two games removed from missing the playoffs (had we finished 10-6 Philly would have won the tie-breaker). I can count quite a few games that turned in our favor to get us those 12 wins. We went to overtime with Houston. Really, any time teams are in overtime it's anyone's ball game. We converted a crucial 4th down to win in Seattle in a game we should have won easily.

There's two. So a bad flip of the coin and we're out of the playoffs. Now, I'm not saying we're a bad team. Heck, we might be the best team in the league. But we're also a team that could have easily missed the playoffs because we make a living of getting ourselves into these situations.

No team goes through a Week 17 nail biter (see past years) to get into the playoffs and then go through a slew of nail biters to become World Champions. It doesn't happen. See Seattle's convincing win over Denver last year. See New England's track record of running up the score on teams.

We're obviously good enough to win games convincingly. We went toe to toe with the best teams in the league this year. We won some, we lost some. But these teams win games convincingly. They don't constantly find themselves in these situations. If they did, they wouldn't be who they are.

So everyone wants to blame the bad calls or the turnovers or dumb penalties or costly dropped passes. When you win games convincingly, you don't need to analyze every break that did or didn't go your way. I guess my point is, we have to find a way to stop getting ourselves in these situations. I knew we wouldn't win it all if we got ourselves in four straight nail biter games in the playoffs. We lost at game 2.

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's in our identity. But it's been an issue. When we win, everyone says to stop whining and enjoy the loss. And when we lose, everyone types our their lists of who to blame. The point is, it shouldn't come down to this. I'm disappointed every time a game comes down to this. I was even complaining after the Seattle and Houston and St. Louis wins earlier this year. We can't keep doing this.
 

JD_KaPow

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This is absolutely true. You know how a good a team is by their record in blowouts, not by their record in close games. The Cowboys of recent years rarely blew teams out. The reason is that they weren't very good. This year, though, we did start blowing teams out, especially down the stretch. Sure, in the playoffs, against 11-5 and 12-4 teams, it was back to nailbiters, because we're not better (or worse) than those teams. But the clearest evidence that we were an improved team this year is found in the blowouts against TEN, NO, JAC, WAS, IND and CHI. We didn't blow out 6 teams total in the 3 previous seasons.
 
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