Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Tales from the Dark Side: El Disastro


What a night at the Partially Domed Rathole on 114. Drew Bledsoe is no longer the guy. It's time for Romo, and it's equally time to throw in the towel on the season. Bring on the TO Owens meltdown. Bring on the finger pointing and whiny bitching from the sheep.

The season is over.

Oh GOD, it feels so good to say that!

Disaster? That doesn't even BEGIN to describe it. Did anything go right for the Team We Love to Scorn last night? It would be much easier to list the players who didn't make huge errors than to list those who did. Let's go around the horn, shall we?

The O line, as usual, did Bledsoe no favors, turning Strahan, Arrington, and company lose time after time. No time to throw, no place for the running backs to go, it was a vintage Cowboy line performance. The shortcomings up front continue to be the root of all evil on this team, which I have been saying since the middle of last year, and which has yet to be addressed by Bondo Face and his minions.

You can blame the line for the safety and for the general lack of any offense through most of the first half. However, Drew has no one to blame but himself for the goal-line interception at the end of the first half. And that mistake seems to have ended his career as a Cowboy.

In a SHOCKING move, Parcells dumped his hand-picked guy at halftime, and put the future of the franchise in the shaky hands of former undrafted free-agent Tony Romo. I feel terrible for Drew - he's a likeable guy, he's a good soldier, he's nearly been killed a dozen times playing for this team, and this is how it ends for him: Unceremoniously benched at halftime.

In the long run, this may be the best way to go. It clearly wasn't going to get better for Drew, so why not go out before it gets really ugly, before your terrible line gets you crippled, and before the sheep start bleating for your blood.

Fittingly, though, Romo's first pass was a boneheaded attempt to blow a hole through about 5 Giants. Needless to say it didn't work. And, while Romo showed some flashes, he also made some plays worthy of a 3-A high school blooper reel. If he's the guy, the QB of the future, he's got a heck of a lot to learn. Maybe he will. We'll see.

And how about the defense? Did they play last night's game? I didn't notice. The Cowboys' "Doomsday III" defense got manhandled by the Giants all night. Pass rush? Not so much. Effective blitzes? Didn't see any. Competent zone coverage in the secondary? Not with Roy Williams and Patrick Watkins back there.

From dropped interceptions to bad tackling to blown coverages, the Cowboys supposedly-dominant defense got blown off the field by the Giants.

Special teams? Another horror show. What was Patrick Crayton thinking when he let that punt bounce right in front of him, only to roll down to the 1-inch line to be downed by the Giants? There was the safety, all gift-wrapped and presented to the Giants D (of course, someone attempting to block Lavar Arrington might have helped also, we've already addressed that). And did Vanderjagt come here so the Cowboys wouldn't have to pass on long field goals anymore? So why didn't Parcells even consider a field goal attempt instead of the 4th and 2 pass to TO Owens, which bounced off his hands like it was nuclear-enriched?

I thought Parcells was going to Kurt Cobain himself at the post-game press conference. I have never seen the Pear Shaped Football Genius SO down. It sorta warmed my heart. Condescending jerk. What comes around goes around, you fraud.

So, the Cowboys are now 3-3, with two division losses, the toughest part of the schedule coming up, and an encyclopedia full of questions at QB. Look out, sheep. Here comes that big 6-10 record. Here comes the internal strife, the TO Owens soap opera, the moaning and groaning on the talk shows, and the "I told you so's" from the Dark Side.

(Insert evil laugh here).

No comments: