[ Michael Wilbon sums it up well ... ]
The
Dallas Cowboys could be the single most overrated team in football ... maybe the single most overrated team in all of professional sports in America. The franchise has won one playoff game since 1996. Every acquisition they make, every game they win is overstated. Their players are overly praised. They haven't mattered in a decade nearly as much as the
New England Patriots or
Pittsburgh Steelers or
Indianapolis Colts or even the New York Giants or Philadelphia Eagles in their own division. Every single thing about the Cowboys, in recent years anyway, has been overdone. They come into every season being picked to win something between a division and the
Super Bowl but limp out to great disappointment annually.
This season the hype has been attached, most specifically, to the Cowboys' offense, to the supposed damage Romo and
Miles Austin,
Dez Bryant and
Felix Jones are going to do, blah, blah, blah. Yet, the Cowboys looked like a bunch of stumblebums in the preseason, and pretty much the same through three quarters of the regular season opener Sunday night.
And no part of the evening was more humiliating for Dallas than the final play of the second quarter, the one that gift-wrapped a 10-0 lead for the Redskins, a play that should never, ever happen beyond high school.
With four seconds left before halftime, and what should have been a rather insignificant 3-0 deficit, the Cowboys for some dumb reason had Romo drop back and attempt a pass from his own 28. That, in and of itself, is unwise because Romo wasn't far enough up the field to heave the ball into the end zone. The professional thing to do would have been to have Romo take a knee and end the half ... or perhaps hand the ball off to run out the clock ... or perhaps run a legitimate downfield play for the rookie Bryant, just to get him the feel for being in a big-time ballgame.
But no. Romo pitches the ball out, which is dangerous enough. And
Tashard Choice, instead of simply going down once he saw no daylight, allowed the ball to be ripped from his arms, which started the play on which
DeAngelo Hall ran the silly fumble into the other end zone for a 10-0 Washington lead.
(The Redskins didn't distinguish themselves, exactly, taking a field goal off the board in such a low-scoring affair, a move that would have been examined to death had that Romo touchdown pass stood in the end.)
As is, this serves as a reminder why these Cowboys cannot be trusted, no matter how good they look on paper. It's why the Redskins have every reason to think they can win the NFC East. These Cowboys aren't talented enough or resourceful enough to be a lock to win anything. The Redskins have a more accomplished quarterback, and no matter how likeable Romo is, the point isn't debatable. Jones, among the runners on both teams, is the most explosive, but neither team has a dominant back.
http://cowboysblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/09/michael-wilbon-cowboys-might-b.html
