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.
