Dallas Cowboys Open Home Schedule With Sloppy 16-10 Win Over Tampa Bay

by Ryan Bush

Hey, it’s only fair to give credit where credit is due.  And, for once, the Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager nailed it perfectly.  Arlington was, in fact, the sight of spectacular and improbable happenings on this second afternoon in autumn.  An attraction was in plain sight for all to see at Cowboys Stadium.  Yes, everything was bigger – and dumber – in Texas.

Jay Novacek was there.  Randy White.  So were 80,000 other fans.  If only the Cowboys didn’t have to show up the afternoon would have gone by without a single hitch.

The starred ones were out and about Sunday, ready to prove to the football world that last week was an absolute aberration.  Don’t trust them to inform you of what, because there were too many similarities that surely had many in attendance making early dinner reservations.

Jason Witten was dropping passes.  Tony Romo spent four quarters in life-preservation mode.  And Dallas receivers were running enough dysfunctional pass patterns to make Romo wish for the return of Roy Williams.

Just maybe the Cowboys didn’t realize that there was an actual game to be played.  It is, after all, quite possible in these parts.

Elaboration pertaining to in-game matchups was minimal this week.  Everybody was too busy talking about kneel-downs to concern themselves with worrying about Ronde Barber, Vincent Jackson, or anyone else on the Tampa Bay roster.

Oh, and the owner was busy trying to conceive of a magical way to attract fans to Arlington’s glass-plated mosque for a Dallas-Tampa Bay home opener that held little local appeal.  Who really cares about banners from two decades before anyway?  The magic from those years departed from Valley Ranch in a windstorm the minute Jerry up and kicked Jimmy out of his trophy-lined office.

The last time Tampa Bay was in town for a home-opener was in 2001 at the dawning of the infamous Quincy Carter era.  I guess Jerry’s busy trying to usher in a new era of his own.  Oh, well.  Just the latest operation of futility around here.  What’s one more?

And speaking of futility, how about pegging these 2012 Cowboys.  Love’em one week, spit on ‘em the next.  What should the proper attitude be this week by Dallas’ world-famous reception committee?  It surely won’t be as forgiving as today’s.

Let’s give a shout out to the home faithful who stuck it out through three hours of perplexing miscues.  It would have been understandable had they walked out.  Especially after such a familiar start.

For the second consecutive week, Dallas received the game’s opening kickoff only to turn the ball over.  In Seattle it was Felix Jones offering up a fumble as an offering – no surprise registered here – and this time it was Tony Romo celebrating an early Christmas with an early interception to former Kansas cornerback Aqib Talib.  Tampa Bay used that early gift to move 29 yards and go ahead 7-0 on a Josh Freeman touchdown pass.

But if there were any concerns of a impending re-run from last week when Seattle used an early score as impetus to run away with the game, those were as wasted as all those high-flyin’ pre-game predictions.

Romo didn’t throw for 500 yards like Eli Manning did against these same Bucs a week ago.  His 283 doesn’t even come close.  But he was able to move the offense, blessed with a short field after a Sean Lee interception, in position for a Demarco Murray touchdown run to tie the score.  Murray finished the day with just 38 yards on 18 carries.

Romo, meanwhile, was dealing with his own set of problems.  When it wasn’t his receivers running ill-advised patterns, it was his offensive line breaking down in their protections, leaving Romo primed and ready for a Texas-sized beating.  Romo was hit from every angle throughout the course of the game, resulting in two second-half fumbles that did nothing but keep the score close.

The Dallas defense completely shut down Tampa’s passing game, holding Freeman to just 110 yards through the air on ten completions, about half of those yards coming in the final two minutes.

As much as team officials try to shrug off Dallas’ 13-11 record inside the palatial Cowboys Stadium, it’s evident that the Cowboys possess anything but a home-field advantage.  Some might say they don’t have any advantage, but that’s beside the point.  Today was a day of homecoming, a day to salute the raising of five banners commemorating championships from so long ago.  While we’re at it, let’s honor Jason Garrett’s team for walking with Lady Luck in a game that each team seemed content to give away.

It wasn’t pretty, but they got the job done at the end of the day.  There was a blocked punt that wasn’t, and a fumble return for touchdown called back, even when replays showed that it shouldn’t have been.

It was a game the Cowboys could not afford to lose.  But enthusiasm should be tempered by realizing that it was a victory with as much meaning going forward as Jerry’s overdone banner raising.

This mess is going on two weeks running, and needs to be cleaned up in a hurry.  Otherwise, it could be another seventeen years before the next banner is hoisted.

Advantage Belongs To Dallas Cowboys Against Inferior Seahawks Team

by Ryan Bush

Lingering Memories?

      1-0  and headed for trouble.  That’s the warning call for Jerry Jones’ bunch of party crashers as they board their flight for a second consecutive road contest to begin the 2012 season.

No, the “trap” cries coming from the gallery have nothing to do with players possibly feeling good about themselves after an impressive victory to open the season.  But there’s an uncommon amount of support to the theory that the Cowboys are the inferior team of the two.  Seahawks lassoing Cowboys?  Who woulda thunk it?!

It’s only Week 2 and we’re already trying to convince ourselves that Pete Carroll has turned the dirty birds of Seattle into the NFL version of USC. Sorry, but last week’s loss to the desert birds of Arizona extinguished any, and all, hopes of Carroll fielding an NFL giant in 2012.  He is a likable guy, but is still starting a rookie quarterback, and couldn’t even get past the Cardinals, of all teams, with an extra timeout in the second half last week.

Depicting Sunday’s clash in the Great Northwest as a “trap” game for the visiting Dallas Cowboys might be considered a mere turning of a benevolent face toward a home team that is desperately seeking for something good to happen to them early in the season.  Trying to convince yourself that Carroll is fielding a better team than Jason Garrett’s bespeaks of some incurable form of mental illness.  And, anyway, how can anyone call any road game in the NFL a “trap” these days?  Whatever happened to parity and equality of conditions?

Speaking of conditions, it should be much, much cooler at kickoff time on Sunday than back in Big D’.  All you Texas tailgaters can thank the NFL scheduling committee for preventing you from having to flip burgers off the hood of your truck in sweltering 90-degree heat.  Heat-stroke, metallic burgers, and Jerry World.  The consequences of mixing the Seattle Seahawks into all that would likely result in a monotonous three-and-a-half hours. Ah, the weather.  Just one of the many indicators that the Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks are not on equal footing at this juncture.

Running backs.  Demarco Murray versus Marshawn Lynch.  Though only in his second NFL season, the edge is obviously in Murray’s corner.

Receivers?  The Cowboys not only outclass Seattle in this department, they out-universe them.

Offensive line.  Little evidence to support the theory that the Cowboys actually possess one.  Advantage Seattle.

Front-seven.  Edge belongs to Dallas, but only because they have a guy named Demarcus Ware.

Secondary?  Still too early to call on this one.  Let’s call it a draw.

Worry Over Dallas Cowboys Running Back Depth Uncalled For

by Ryan Bush

Demarco Murray

Eleven days in between games is just too much time.  Not for the Dallas Cowboys, but for the whole circus around them.  Especially after a victory, when magicians start chanting and dreamers start dreaming, and a token sample of reality is tossed into the fray as a comical source of combustion.  And what a combustible moment it was this time around, when fans peered into the backfield behind local hero 1A, Demarco Murray, and saw….........

Yeah, that’s what they saw.  Ghosts of emptiness.  No sight sets more teeth on edge nor as many brains on a hysterical path of concern that spills its way onto Internet webpages.

It was a frightening moment for some careworn fans when they realized the ramifications for America’s Team should Demarco Murray happen to go down with an injury during the course of this season.  Uh, yes, it wouldn’t be good, that much is known, and has been known since Murray’s last ailment cropped up last December.

So will Murray last?

He’d better, so the operative reply has been going.  For Jason Garrett’s longevity.

Come to find out, it’s Garrett that everybody’s busy pointing fingers at right now.  A shared backfield is the chic thing in the NFL nowadays, and it’s Garrett’s fault for not providing the Cowboys with one.

 So everyone wants two running backs.  As if that’s the way it’s always been.

When Bill Parcells drafted Marion Barber III in the 2005 draft, only twelve months after selecting Notre Dame’s Julius Jones, it was considered a stroke of innovational genius.  A two-back system!  What a thought!

Nobody around the Ranch had even considered such a formula before, chiefly, because there was no reason to.  Besides the fact that Jerry Jones never took the responsibility of filling the position very seriously, the reason Emmitt Smith never enjoyed the benefits of a capable backup in his thirteen years on the beat, excepting, maybe, Chris Warren, was that he didn’t need one.  It wasn’t the star-like qualities of Sherman Williams that convinced the Cowboys to give the Alabama running back a shot in the second round of the 1995 draft.  It was his lack thereof.  Williams wasn’t good enough to be a starter.  That’s why Dallas drafted him, as sad as it sounds.

 

To Jones, Emmitt was too good to have somebody nipping at his heels begging for playing time.

Nobody seemed concerned about his health, or the consequences of a fly-by-night injury.

But, you say, Emmitt never got hurt!

That’s exactly the point, and one small coincidence that makes the Cowboys’ success in the ‘90’s so amazing, and this rant about Garrett’s supposed slipshod methods to piecing together a roster so ridiculous.

Murray has no one reliable behind him because the head coach hasn’t had enough time to find someone to put there.  

 

Has one victory blinded so many to the fact that, yes, Garrett, in year two, is still cleaning this roster out from the Wade Phillips era?

An Offseason Of What-ifs For Dallas Cowboys Can Finally Be Silenced Against Giants

 A perpetual game of what-ifs has been played around the Dallas Cowboys’ team complex since last January’s season-ending loss to the Giants in Week 17.  It’s to be expected when you lose a firm grasp on the division in one meeting, and then watch someone else steal it right out from under your nose during the next.  What if Tony Romo’s hand hadn’t been swollen like a purple pumpkin from contact with a helmet a week earlier?  What if Demarco Murray had been in the backfield instead of on the sideline with a broken ankle?  What if Dan Bailey’s kick that would have forced overtime three weeks previously at Cowboys Stadium had gone through the uprights, rather than off the hand of Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul?  What if the Cowboys had won the NFC East instead of the Big Blue G-Men?  The suppositions go on and on…

The Cowboys entered that month of all months, December, with a 7-4 record, but collapsed down the stretch, finishing with an 8-8 mark.  There was no season-ending celebration, no playoffs.  Instead, the Cowboys got to recline in a tub of ice while the Giants marched through the NFC Playoffs and all the way to a Super Bowl championship.

The Cowboys’ entire off-season program of free-agent signings, the draft, and mini-camps, has been geared to beat the Giants, winners of five of the last six meetings in the series.  Cornerbacks Brandon Carr and Morris Claiborne join safety Barry Church for what is expected to be a much better secondary than the one Eli Manning torched at will twice in the season’s final months. 

These three pieces, among others, have the Cowboys feeling confident of their chances this time around.  You can hear it in their voices, see it in their walk.  The Cowboys know the challenge ahead, yet realize the opportunity.  The Giants are the champions, but are not invincible.  Last year’s down-to-the-wire contest in Arlington that ended on a blocked field-goal proves that.

And here we are, eight months later, on the other side of training camp, preseason and final cutdowns, with the Giants directly ahead.  It’s time to put an end to this game of what-ifs, and could’ve-would’ve-should’ves.  The Cowboys say they want the crown for themselves.  Well, now is the time to go and take the first major step in winning it.

Dallas Cowboys' Felix Jones’ Uninspiring Play Gives Additional Meaning To Remainder Of Preseason on the Long Road to the Super Bowl

 By Ryan Bush

As late August threatens to give way to September, head coaches and general managers have begun to anticipate the first of two roster cut downs in order to reach the NFL-mandated 53-man roster.  Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett has been pelted with questions from the media this preseason surrounding the team’s wide-open battle at three of the five receiver positions, leaving little room for other discussion.  Cole Beasley’s seven-catch performance in San Diego on Saturday night has only intensified the ongoing debate among coaches, players, and fans alike.

Meanwhile, a developing story at the running back position has to have Garrett and general manager Jerry Jones a bit concerned as well.  Three weeks of training camp and two exhibition contests into the season and what once was thought to be a roster position set in stone has turned into a host of veritable question marks that is nothing but disconcerting.

Entering his fifth season in the league, Felix Jones traveled to California for training camp with a firm grip on the No. 2 halfback position behind last year’s rookie phenom Demarco Murray.  But one uninspiring practice after another, coupled with two sub-par performances against Oakland and San Diego, has left Jones’ role with the team very much in doubt. The speed that convinced the Cowboys to draft him twenty-second overall in the 2008 draft out of Arkansas seems to have disappeared, and his impressive agility right along with it.  And all this developing around two running backs, Murray and Olawale, that have made the most out of every carry.  Without a doubt, this could spell trouble for the Cowboys and Jones.

In a league that has adopted a dual-running back fold as the norm, the Cowboys were counting on Jones to be Murray’s sidekick in the backfield, spelling him intermittently throughout the course of each game.  Jones’ game-breaking abilities in the passing department made him a valuable asset as a third-down back in Jason Garrett’s offense as well.

The tone from the front-office suggests the Cowboys are prepared to be patient with Jones, who is coming off off-season shoulder surgery, and aren’t watching the waiver wire for any possible replacement.  

But how long their patience will last is the question?

Because,  it’s no secret that Garrett needs production from his No. 2 back and might be hesitant to expect Olawale to fill that role as a raw rookie in the case that Jones continues to flounder, making the final two exhibition games versus St. Louis and Miami, oh, so very important.