Cowboys Defeat Vikings, But…

Let me preface this by apologizing to my avid fans, its been busy at work and home, so the blog has not been updated as much as I had hoped this past week. We’ll back to the normal article load this week. Now, back to the state of Cowboys Nation… The fans showed up against the Vikings this week, so that’s a positive. The Cowboys defeated the Vikings, but it was not a very convincing or dominating win, and this brings me to the big controversial question:

Are We Overrated?

Yes, I’m asking it, I did not studder. I’m posing the question. If you want to throw down your two cents post your response in our fanpacked message board. For now, I will take a look at our recent “body of works” and you can be the judge.

Personally, I would not say we’re overrated per se; however, I don’t think we’re as good as our record (6-1) would indicate. This version of the Cowboys has a supercharged offensive scheme with Garrett at the controls, and the defense has improved somewhat since week 1. If you look at ALL of our games, we have faced some sort of adversity, mainly penalties. Penalties have throttled down our scoring potential immensely, and its going to catch up to us sooner or later.

We have been a 2nd half team all year long and we’ve kept teams in the game up all year. The Patriots played well, but we clearly beat ourselves, so this is somewhat encouraging. Meaning, if we didn’t commit so many dumb penalties, we could have won this game, it didn’t happen, and the end result was a large helping of rancid Clam Chowder.

The Buffalo game, was just a miraculous game, but we played horrible. A mix bag of penalties and tons of turnovers. With some luck, and bad defense by the Bills, we pulled out the win, but we looked bad.

Same thing with the Rams. We did not win the game until the second half. For a brief time, I thought we were going to get upset. I felt it, you felt it too, but we won the game.

The game at Chicago and at Miami was close until the 3rd Quarter.

Point is, we’re not the completely dominating team that our record indicates. When you think 6-1 you think we’re just kicking people’s ass all game long, you think we have a dominating defense and dominating offense. We have a really good offense, but the defense is still catching up.

Then this game against the Vikings was good, but not dominating. Yes, I know we cannot dominate every team and I know we cannot win all the games; however, when you think about our Super Bowl teams in the past, we won in dominating fashion. The Colts and Patriots are winning in dominating fashion. We’re winning right now, but its not very convincing to me. Call me spoiled, call me a pessimist, but I’m being honest. We roll into these games, and let all these teams in the game. The Bills exploited both sides of the ball, the Patriots did the same thing, the Vikings stayed in the game despite having a crap passing game. The Rams, Dolphins, Buffalo, and Vikings are bad teams, these are teams we should have destroyed early in the first half. We failed to do that. Fix that stuff!

Penalties and lack of discipline are keeping this team from being a completely dominating team. Right now, we’re the cream of the crop in the NFC, but the rest of the East is hot on our tails. There is no room for error, and no room for floundering down the stretch. We have a stretch of games that will test our innerself. Two straight games on the road with divisional rivals – the Giants and Eagles. But we do have some help with three straight home games as we host the Redskins, who always play us hard. Then we host the Jets in a “trap game” Then a possible preview to the NFC Championship game against the Packers. The rest of the season is not any easier: @Detroit, Philly, @Carolina, @Washington which could have major playoff positioning implications.

We are very capable of winning all these games. I don’t see any of these teams slowing down our offense, but the penalties need to be cut down if we’re going to get to the big game. If we keep playing the way we’re playing, teams will use our slow, sloppy starts and beat us up. Championship teams get into the postseason with convincing fashion and they peak when the time is right. Will we be that team? The second half of the Cowboys season is coming, get ready!
Enjoy the bye week, we have ALOT of work ahead.