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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/17/AR2009111703341.html
Best of luck on Sunday to you 'Boys. :laugh2:
Cowboys are approaching a crucial point
Dallas trying to avoid pattern of late-season spirals as Commanders come to town
[SIZE=-1]By Mark Maske[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Wednesday, November 18, 2009 [/SIZE]
As his Dallas Cowboys teammates dressed and packed their belongings hurriedly at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field 10 days ago, quarterback Tony Romo sat on a stool in front of his locker and finished up the last of his interviews.
The Cowboys had just beaten the Eagles on the same field where their previous season had ended in embarrassing fashion. They had reached the halfway point of this season as a surprising success: first in the NFC East and on a four-game winning streak. Without wide receiver Terrell Owens, the Cowboys' offense was thriving, and an interviewer was doing his best to prompt Romo into a grand pronouncement about how the victory was a vindication.
Romo refused to be baited. He grinned and said: "We've got to get better. We've got to improve."
The Cowboys apparently have learned not to get carried away with the promise of November success, even when it wasn't necessarily expected.
They followed the uplifting triumph in Philadelphia with a dud of a performance in a loss Sunday at Green Bay, and now the Cowboys find themselves trying to steady themselves again as they ready for this weekend's home game against the Washington Commanders.
"This feeling's always bad when you lose," Cowboys Coach Wade Phillips said at a news conference Monday. "It's been a long time. It's been almost a month and a half since we lost a game so we need to see how we bounce back from that. We didn't play our best, and that hurt us. We had some opportunities. We had some missed opportunities that we didn't convert either offensively or defensively. We just didn't quite play quite as good as we'd been playing during the winning streak. . . . I think our team will bounce back."
The Cowboys are hoping to avoid their pattern of recent seasons, in which they have played their worst in the games that mattered the most. Since 1997, the Cowboys are 19-39 from Dec. 1 onward, including 0-5 in the playoffs. Their last season with a winning post-November record was 1996, when they went 3-2 under Coach Barry Switzer. Last season they went 8-4 through the end of November and 1-3 in December, concluding with a 44-6 defeat in Philadelphia that denied them a playoff spot.
Romo, until Sunday, had been the king of November, with 13 straight wins in the month. But the offense sputtered in Sunday's 17-7 loss to the Packers, and a loss to the Commanders this weekend undoubtedly would produce consternation in Dallas.
"Not to be able to do the things that you can do is just exactly how you lose the game. . . . It's very disappointing," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told reporters after the game in Green Bay. "It just is a reminder to everyone that all these teams have really good athletes. They have good players, and if you fool around and let them . . . get their game going, you can lose them in a disappointing way. . . . I thought we played hard [but] I thought we were disjointed in many areas."
Until the Green Bay game, things were looking up for the Cowboys. Last season's highly disappointing finish led to an offseason house-cleaning of sorts in which Owens was released. The Cowboys, in the early going of this season, have managed to live without Owens's production as a receiver. Miles Austin has emerged as a top down-the-field threat at wideout. Romo has mostly limited his mistakes, and the Cowboys rank in the league's top 10 in both rushing and passing offense.
"I think individually I've improved tremendously, just from all of the things I was able to take from last season, and not just that [final] game," Romo said in Philadelphia. "But you always look at yourself from an honest perspective and you have to say, 'What do I have to improve upon?' And there were things I had to get better at to take another step, and I feel very confident in going about that process and coming along. And I've still got a ways to go."
The Cowboys also were relatively drama-free in the season's first half, at least by the standard set during Owens's time in Dallas. There was one recent episode in which Roy Williams, Owens's supposed replacement as the club's top wideout, spoke up about his role in the offense, saying he had failed to connect with Romo and others were getting the ball thrown to them more regularly. But even that was comparatively mild.
"I didn't think it was a big deal," Williams said in the locker room after the win over the Eagles. "I knew what I said. We're just working. We're going to continue to work, and we can only get better."
The Cowboys rebounded from a 2-2 start to move into first place with their four straight wins, and Phillips's players were praising him for his calm and even-handed ways.
"It starts with Wade," tight end Jason Witten said in Philadelphia. "He always kept his composure. We didn't panic. I don't know if we saw this. But we knew we could play good football and get through that."
Now comes a crossroads as the Cowboys prepare for their first meeting with the Commanders in their sparkling new stadium. They must reshuffle their offensive line after losing right tackle Marc Colombo to a broken leg and ligament damage in his ankle. On defense, the secondary will be minus safety Ken Hamlin because of a high ankle sprain.
Beating the Commanders would further entrench the Cowboys as viable playoff contenders. But another loss would put the focus back on their recent history of late-season downward spirals and further intensify the scrutiny on Phillips, whose contract contains an option for next season, and Romo.
"We step onto the field thinking we have a chance, and we really feel like if we play up to our potential we can come out with a win," Romo said in Philadelphia. "At the same boat, we also know that we're far from perfect, you know, we've got a long way to go."
Best of luck on Sunday to you 'Boys. :laugh2:
