Writer’s Blocks: Reasoning With Football Season

FRISCO, Texas – It’s a lot easier to write a long, meandering column when you’re not on a short week.

Apologies for missing Week 10. The Cowboys played on Monday night, and by the time I had regained my wits, they were kicking off against Minnesota. My bad.

I have my doubts anyone actually missed this, but I mainly do it for me anyway. So I’m just going to hop right into it. Here’s a handful of stuff that’s on my mind as I try – mainly in vain – to figure out how I feel about this very confusing team we’ve all been watching.

  1. The fun thing about writing a weekly column on Thursday is that all the obvious storylines from the previous week have been beaten to death already.

If you clicked this link to read about the red zone play-calling against the Vikings or the punt return that wasn’t, I’m sorry to disappoint you. By Thursday morning, I just can’t bring myself to do it anymore.

Teams lose games for countless different reasons, and every loss has a scapegoat. Sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes it’s not, sometimes it’s fair and sometimes it’s not.

For my money, of the Cowboys’ four losses to this point in the season, this latest one to the Vikings falls most squarely on the coaching staff. Whether you want to point to some of the early calls, like the missed 57-yard field goal, or the late-game miscues, the decision-making from the Dallas sideline simply wasn’t good enough.

That’s about as much as I can muster up the energy to say.

  1. Having just said that the coaching staff had a bad game, please spare me the outrage about the coaching staff.

I’m well aware that the vast majority of Cowboys fans are fed up with Jason Garrett. My Twitter mentions are a dumpster fire after every loss, but especially so after this latest one.

Here’s the thing: it sounds like abject insanity to pull the plug on a coach or a coaching staff that, despite the shortcomings, has the Cowboys on top of the division with seven games to play.

The Cowboys have yet to truly play to their potential, but the season is only half over. We learned just a year ago what they’re capable of when they do it.

Do I know for sure that’s going to happen? Nope. This Cowboys team has been maddeningly inconsistent.

But I’m patient enough to see what happens. There are seven weeks left in the season, and I can see it going a bunch of different ways. I can’t see the value in knee-jerk decisions born out of frustration.

The next seven weeks are going to fly by. And when that’s done with, we’ll have a way better idea of how to feel. I promise. Read More