Terence Newman 41
January-9th-2008, 10:54 AM
Circle Those Wagons 'Round
http://www.dallascowboys.com/images/site_divider_720.gif http://www.dallascowboys.com/images/spagnola_50.jpgMickey Spagnola - Email (http://www.dallascowboys.com/contact_us.cfm?cat=Spagnola)
DallasCowboys.com Columnist
January 8, 2008 6:40 PM (http://www.dallascowboys.com/news.cfm?id=5BFF95B9-E82D-50C8-77DA04AF8CAC3643&fontSize=black16pt) http://www.dallascowboys.com/images/site_divider_720.gif IRVING, Texas - Just the other day Wade Phillips said it:
"It's time, it's that time."
Yeah, you bet. Finally for the Dallas Cowboys it's playoff time. It's time for a home playoff game, the rarest of occurrences over the past nine years. It's time for a playoff game after sitting idly by the first weekend of this annual postseason fest, another first around these parts in the past 12 years. Why, it's time for the NFC's No. 1 seed to play for something tangible for the first time in three weeks, and no Cowboys team has enjoyed such an extended mental vacation since 1994. That spans 13 years.
Steaks so rare are sent back to the kitchen.
Maybe we've forgotten what this routine is like it's been so long - long enough for say, a freshman in high school back then to have graduated from college, gotten married and had a couple of kids. Indeed, it's a new generation.
And from the sounds of things echoing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Saskatchewan to Cancun, Phillips should have amended his battle cry to "It's time, it's that time to circle the wagons" for Sunday's encounter of the third kind with the New York Football Giants at Texas Stadium.
Never has a No. 1-seeded team been so abused. You'd have thought the Cowboys were no more than some party piñata dangling on a rope from a basement crossbeam.
Your coaches are interviewing for other jobs. Whap.
Your scouting director just took another job. Whap.
Your quarterback took the boys with Jessica and them to Cancun for the idle weekend, and we've got pictures. Whap, whap.
Your record-setting receiver will be a game-time decision. Whap.
A few of your defensive players went to New Orleans to watch their alma maters play in the BCS title game. Whap.
You've never beaten the same team three times in one season, seemingly all but minimizing the fact the Cowboys already have beaten the Giants twice this season. Whap.
Your head coach has never won a playoff game as a head coach. Whap.
The Giants are on a roll . . . the Giants have turned the corner . . . the Giants are 8-1 on the road this season (again don't worry about that one occurring at Texas Stadium in the season opener) . . . Giants quarterback Eli Manning has figured out in two weeks what he hadn't in four years . . . the Giants are much better off having played their hearts out the final game of the regular season, even if they lost . . . the Giants are much better off having played a road game this past Sunday . . . the Giants are much better off having to play another road game this Sunday.
Whap! Whap! Whap!
And just like that, before the Dallas Cowboys have even practiced in earnest the first time for this third meeting with the New York Giants, the goodness from this precedent-matching, division-winning, franchise-inspiring 13-3 season has spilled all over the floor, scattering around as if marbles on smooth hardwoods.
Not sure why the Cowboys would even show with the other 64,000 at Texas Stadium for this one. A verbal walkover already has taken place.
If only Tex Schramm were here to bellow out one of his patented baritone "B.S."
Amazing, absolutely amazing how in 1½ week's time the conference's No. 1 seed can be turned into an underdog, as if winning 13 games during the regular season regularly happens by accident and finishing with the NFL's third-ranked offense and ninth-ranked defense - one of just three playoff teams to finish with a top-10 double - is but a falling star.
Now none of this is to diminish the quality of Sunday's opponent. We know. The Giants finished second in the NFC East with a 10-6 record. While they lost to the Cowboys twice, they were within three points and four points during the fourth quarter of both games before the Cowboys dropped a 50-yard touchdown pass on them during each to forge the final 10- and 11-point separations.
Maybe this is all the fault of curious me. Too much idle time on my hands. I had time to read today. I had time to watch and listen today. And goodness knows none of us west of the Hudson know a thing about football. Probably don't even know where the pin goes to blow the blasted thing up.
But man, are those East Coast pompoms waiving wildly. Why, the team which finished the final three games of the season 1-2 and the final eight 4-4 is on a straight path to the Super Bowl. Why, we have Giants players, probably the same ones throwing the poor kid under the bus for the better part of two years, suddenly saying, "Eli can beat you," as did Brandon Jacobs, who isn't shy about saying much of anything, but then that's a topic for another day.
Shudder at the thought, but hey, these Giants went to Tampa Bay, faced a team which didn't even finish with as good a record (9-7), a team which had lost three of its previous four games, a team which barely averaged 20 points a game and a team with nary one Pro Bowl player playing in a division without one Pro Bowl player, and of all things, won.
Glory be.
But combine the Giants' first playoff victory since winning the NFC title in 2000, which somehow on the other side of the Hudson gives the Giants a leg up on the Cowboys, who haven't won a playoff game since 1996 even if the majority of the Cowboys players were teenagers back then, along with the valiant 38-35 loss to the Patriots and that makes the Giants a "hot" team.
And there are those proclaiming these two games the best two-game stretch "of Manning's career," even if he threw for all of 185 yards against the Bucs. Seems to me Manning was darn good in those two games against the Cowboys this year, completing 51 of 75 passes for five touchdowns, three interceptions and a QB rating of 94.9.
Also read where the Giants solved Rubic's Cube, otherwise known as the mysterious Tampa 2 defense. Well did you watch the game? The Bucs abandoned their Tampa 2, playing their other safety in the box to stop the Giants running game. Manning was throwing against single coverage most of the game, and at least one astute observer, but then he works on the New Jersey side of the River, pointed out Manning made 'em pay for their defensive changeup.
Well, who knows, maybe this has been Manning's best stretch of his career, but then just maybe "best" is relative in a part of the country given to hyperbole, good and bad.
And oh, don't worry so much about perennial Pro Bowl tight end Jeremy Shockey missing. He only caught 17 passes for 170 yards and a touchdown against the Cowboys in those two games. They got some guy named the Boss playing tight end now. Maybe they'll ask him to sing Thunder Road, too.
Is this all silly or what?
Now I don't know, you guys might be buying into all this. Your prerogative. If not, better fasten your sanity belt, because by Sunday reading and listening to all this stuff will have you talking to yourself.
Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe these 13-3 Cowboys need a burr up their saddle if the memory of last year's cruel playoff loss is not burr enough. Or maybe there is burr enough since 47 guys on this 53-man roster have never won an NFL playoff game in their lives.
But me, I sense a renewed focus when it comes time to focus on football. Ask yourself: Why would a team which has come so far, yet hasn't won a thing, suddenly let down its guard? Does that even make a lick of sense to you? Why would this coaching staff allow that? Why would all these intangible reasons supposedly responsible for the team's success this year suddenly become their downfall?
Warning: If nothing else, do not mitigate fresh minds and bodies. Nor you guys at Texas Stadium. And certainly not having to travel halfway across the country this time of year.
Oh yeah, one other thing: Pity unto those if the dang piñata starts striking back.
http://www.dallascowboys.com/images/site_divider_720.gif http://www.dallascowboys.com/images/spagnola_50.jpgMickey Spagnola - Email (http://www.dallascowboys.com/contact_us.cfm?cat=Spagnola)
DallasCowboys.com Columnist
January 8, 2008 6:40 PM (http://www.dallascowboys.com/news.cfm?id=5BFF95B9-E82D-50C8-77DA04AF8CAC3643&fontSize=black16pt) http://www.dallascowboys.com/images/site_divider_720.gif IRVING, Texas - Just the other day Wade Phillips said it:
"It's time, it's that time."
Yeah, you bet. Finally for the Dallas Cowboys it's playoff time. It's time for a home playoff game, the rarest of occurrences over the past nine years. It's time for a playoff game after sitting idly by the first weekend of this annual postseason fest, another first around these parts in the past 12 years. Why, it's time for the NFC's No. 1 seed to play for something tangible for the first time in three weeks, and no Cowboys team has enjoyed such an extended mental vacation since 1994. That spans 13 years.
Steaks so rare are sent back to the kitchen.
Maybe we've forgotten what this routine is like it's been so long - long enough for say, a freshman in high school back then to have graduated from college, gotten married and had a couple of kids. Indeed, it's a new generation.
And from the sounds of things echoing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Saskatchewan to Cancun, Phillips should have amended his battle cry to "It's time, it's that time to circle the wagons" for Sunday's encounter of the third kind with the New York Football Giants at Texas Stadium.
Never has a No. 1-seeded team been so abused. You'd have thought the Cowboys were no more than some party piñata dangling on a rope from a basement crossbeam.
Your coaches are interviewing for other jobs. Whap.
Your scouting director just took another job. Whap.
Your quarterback took the boys with Jessica and them to Cancun for the idle weekend, and we've got pictures. Whap, whap.
Your record-setting receiver will be a game-time decision. Whap.
A few of your defensive players went to New Orleans to watch their alma maters play in the BCS title game. Whap.
You've never beaten the same team three times in one season, seemingly all but minimizing the fact the Cowboys already have beaten the Giants twice this season. Whap.
Your head coach has never won a playoff game as a head coach. Whap.
The Giants are on a roll . . . the Giants have turned the corner . . . the Giants are 8-1 on the road this season (again don't worry about that one occurring at Texas Stadium in the season opener) . . . Giants quarterback Eli Manning has figured out in two weeks what he hadn't in four years . . . the Giants are much better off having played their hearts out the final game of the regular season, even if they lost . . . the Giants are much better off having played a road game this past Sunday . . . the Giants are much better off having to play another road game this Sunday.
Whap! Whap! Whap!
And just like that, before the Dallas Cowboys have even practiced in earnest the first time for this third meeting with the New York Giants, the goodness from this precedent-matching, division-winning, franchise-inspiring 13-3 season has spilled all over the floor, scattering around as if marbles on smooth hardwoods.
Not sure why the Cowboys would even show with the other 64,000 at Texas Stadium for this one. A verbal walkover already has taken place.
If only Tex Schramm were here to bellow out one of his patented baritone "B.S."
Amazing, absolutely amazing how in 1½ week's time the conference's No. 1 seed can be turned into an underdog, as if winning 13 games during the regular season regularly happens by accident and finishing with the NFL's third-ranked offense and ninth-ranked defense - one of just three playoff teams to finish with a top-10 double - is but a falling star.
Now none of this is to diminish the quality of Sunday's opponent. We know. The Giants finished second in the NFC East with a 10-6 record. While they lost to the Cowboys twice, they were within three points and four points during the fourth quarter of both games before the Cowboys dropped a 50-yard touchdown pass on them during each to forge the final 10- and 11-point separations.
Maybe this is all the fault of curious me. Too much idle time on my hands. I had time to read today. I had time to watch and listen today. And goodness knows none of us west of the Hudson know a thing about football. Probably don't even know where the pin goes to blow the blasted thing up.
But man, are those East Coast pompoms waiving wildly. Why, the team which finished the final three games of the season 1-2 and the final eight 4-4 is on a straight path to the Super Bowl. Why, we have Giants players, probably the same ones throwing the poor kid under the bus for the better part of two years, suddenly saying, "Eli can beat you," as did Brandon Jacobs, who isn't shy about saying much of anything, but then that's a topic for another day.
Shudder at the thought, but hey, these Giants went to Tampa Bay, faced a team which didn't even finish with as good a record (9-7), a team which had lost three of its previous four games, a team which barely averaged 20 points a game and a team with nary one Pro Bowl player playing in a division without one Pro Bowl player, and of all things, won.
Glory be.
But combine the Giants' first playoff victory since winning the NFC title in 2000, which somehow on the other side of the Hudson gives the Giants a leg up on the Cowboys, who haven't won a playoff game since 1996 even if the majority of the Cowboys players were teenagers back then, along with the valiant 38-35 loss to the Patriots and that makes the Giants a "hot" team.
And there are those proclaiming these two games the best two-game stretch "of Manning's career," even if he threw for all of 185 yards against the Bucs. Seems to me Manning was darn good in those two games against the Cowboys this year, completing 51 of 75 passes for five touchdowns, three interceptions and a QB rating of 94.9.
Also read where the Giants solved Rubic's Cube, otherwise known as the mysterious Tampa 2 defense. Well did you watch the game? The Bucs abandoned their Tampa 2, playing their other safety in the box to stop the Giants running game. Manning was throwing against single coverage most of the game, and at least one astute observer, but then he works on the New Jersey side of the River, pointed out Manning made 'em pay for their defensive changeup.
Well, who knows, maybe this has been Manning's best stretch of his career, but then just maybe "best" is relative in a part of the country given to hyperbole, good and bad.
And oh, don't worry so much about perennial Pro Bowl tight end Jeremy Shockey missing. He only caught 17 passes for 170 yards and a touchdown against the Cowboys in those two games. They got some guy named the Boss playing tight end now. Maybe they'll ask him to sing Thunder Road, too.
Is this all silly or what?
Now I don't know, you guys might be buying into all this. Your prerogative. If not, better fasten your sanity belt, because by Sunday reading and listening to all this stuff will have you talking to yourself.
Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe these 13-3 Cowboys need a burr up their saddle if the memory of last year's cruel playoff loss is not burr enough. Or maybe there is burr enough since 47 guys on this 53-man roster have never won an NFL playoff game in their lives.
But me, I sense a renewed focus when it comes time to focus on football. Ask yourself: Why would a team which has come so far, yet hasn't won a thing, suddenly let down its guard? Does that even make a lick of sense to you? Why would this coaching staff allow that? Why would all these intangible reasons supposedly responsible for the team's success this year suddenly become their downfall?
Warning: If nothing else, do not mitigate fresh minds and bodies. Nor you guys at Texas Stadium. And certainly not having to travel halfway across the country this time of year.
Oh yeah, one other thing: Pity unto those if the dang piñata starts striking back.