It sort of makes you hanker for the good, old daze, like last year, when they only lost 20 - 17.  Looking on the bright side, there are things the Pokes can build on for next season, i.e., scoring the last three points in the game, holding the Eagles to no offensive TDs in the second half, not losing the game from special teams screw ups, finding the right buses after the game, early tee times in Cabo.

It’s really good to know that The Jerry isn’t looking for any change in head coaching.   You really have to like the consistency we can expect under Buttercup Puffalump.  There’s no reason to be dissatisfied with 9 - 7 and no playoff shot.  I can hardly wait for next season.  More of the same.  It’s going to be a fun ride to watch The Jerry morph into Al Davis and become completely, laughingly irrelevant.  So far, The Jerry’s track record is good years from 1989 - 1995, bad years since.  So, seven good years, 13 bad years, and no reason to believe we’re going to return to the good years.

The Jerry has his Head Coach, one who wouldn’t for the world interfere with The Jerry having fun with his bright and shiny toy.  The Jerry can pretend he’s a f’ball guy with Buttercup Puffalump around, and who’s to stop him?  Who is to hold anyone accountable?  Who is to demand performance up to expectations?  What a silly and increasingly irrelevant scene.  Too bad.  The Dallas Cowboys used to be something.  Not any more.

1.  There’s a rumor the NFL moved the Cows and Iggles from an early start to a late start.  That’s not true.  The NFL tried to keep the Cows at the noon start Dallas/100 pm start Philly, but the NFL found it was not strong enough to prevent the Cows from moving the game to the later time slot.  Thus, Philly will know that it’s out of the playoffs by the time the game starts and likely will cave.  Yes, it’s true.  Tex Schramm is still alive, alive, I tell you!, and he’s still controlling the NFL.

2.  Really bummy to have written all I wrote a couple of days ago and fail to mention the passing of the great Sam Baugh.  Go to star-telegram.com for the Ft. Worth paper or dallasnews.com for the Dallas paper and the tributes written for the only Redskin worth a hoot, a truly great, great NFL football player.

3.  There are questions in some people’s mind as to whether Dallas will win this Sunday at Philly.  Of course Dallas will win.  Threre’s no question Dallas will win.  Dallas has to win so it can continue its numbing streak of not winning a playoff game.  Dallas will beat the Iggles so the Cow fans will get all excited about running the table, and then Dallas will go to Minneapolis and lose to Tavaris Jackson or go to Chicago and lose to Bobby Douglass or go to Phoenix and lose to the stock clerk turned NFL QB.  The Cows can’t go one and done in the playoffs, again, if they don’t get to the playoffs.  Besides, what would Philly do it if actually succeeded at something?  The phans wouldn’t know what to say or do.  Philly phans aren’t paranoid; no, people really are out to get them.  Philly phans don’t have in inferiority complex; they’re really inferior.

4.  I was reminded this week by Rand, he of the Tennessee Titans and the Music City Miracle against the Bills from Buffalo and Buttercup Puffalump coaching the Bills when the Bills had the Titans strapped at the end of the playoff game until the Bills special team let down and let the Titans win, advance in the playoffs, etc.  Wade Phillips is known for having bad special teams that let the team down in important situations.  Wade is just being Wade.  It is what he is.  It is what he does.

5.  Another Wadeism is that he comes to a new Head Coaching gig, and under his guidance and leadership, the team posts a steadily worse record each year of his tenure.  He’s just doing what he always does.

6.  If you’re a fan of the Pokes, don’t expect the Pokes to win in Philly and catch fire and show their true selves in the playoffs.  This is the Cows’ true self.  This is who they are and what they do and how they do it. There’s no cavalry riding to the rescue here.  They’re not going to turn it on.  They are a team that is penalized more than any other NFL team.  They’re a team with special teams so ordinary that they’ll cut your heart out with a crappy play when a good play is most needed.  They’ll do something chowderheaded, like hold Baltimore to 105 yards running, about a three yard per carry average, except for two plays, back to back 77 and 82 yard touchdown runs.  Other than that, they played really well.  Other  than all those Souix, Custer would have won at the Little Big Horn.  Other than that?  What does “other than that” mean?  It’s like Dandy Don’s “If ifs and buts were soup and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.”  In the words of Bill Parcells, you are what you are.  You don’t play fifteen games over sixteen weeks and all of a sudden become something different in the sixteenth game.  Maybe the Giants did last year against the Pats in the last regular season game.  Maybe.

7.  The Jerry didn’t like having someone he couldn’t lord it over as head coach.  That was the problem with The Tuna.  As Tom said, The Tuna wouldn’t let The Jerry play with his toy, the little dallas cowboys.  The Tuna took the batteries out of the toy, and The Jerry had nothing to play with.  So The Jerry removed The Tuna and replaced The Tuna with Buttercup Puffalump, thus allowing The Jerry to have fun again with his toy.  The Jerry has ruined the toy, but that’s the price he’s willing to pay.  And besides, The Jerry doesn’t even think that’s a price he’s paying, we’re all paying, to allow The Jerry to play with his toy.  So we’ll have The Jerry playing with his toy, the little dallas cowboys, in the new sandbox he built for them, and there’s no chance in the world that the Cowboys, under The Jerry, will ever reach it’s potential.  The Cows reaching their potential would require The Jerry to give up his GM position and just sit down and shut up, and that ain’t gonna happen.  Cowboy fans, myself included, are doomed.  Screwed.  Scroomed.  Doowed.

Inigo Montoya:  “He’s dead.  He can’t talk.”

Miracle Max:  “Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much.  It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead.  There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.  Mostly dead is slightly alive.  With all dead, well, with all dead, there’s only one thing you can do.”

Inigno Montoya:  “What’s that?”

Miracle Max:  “Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”

With the good lines from “The Godfather”and a couple more from “The Godfather, Part II,” and a bunch from “The Princess Bride,” you’re set for life.  Whether it’s quantum physics you’re discussing, or cloning sheep for legal purposes, or noodling the nuances of NAFTA, or just trying to get a little, these three will set you up.  Likewise for trying to ferret out the ups and downs, lefts and rights, ins and outs of the National Football League.

For instance, the little dallas cowpokes are mostly dead.  They are slightly alive.  The key question is when will they become all dead.  It’s coming, like death and taxes.  Will it be in Philly Sunday afternoon?  Very possibly.  In fact, they could be all dead right now but hiding it well under the chiseled chin and loose, spraying spittle of . . . oops, that’s Bill Cowher, not Buttercup Puffalump, the current Director of Daffodils,  Day Lillies, and Dispenser of Emotional Depends, a/k/a Head Coach of The Little Dallas Cowpokes.  (Phillips isn’t the head coach any more than the bowsprit on a schooner is the captain of the yacht.)  But sometime soon, before the end of Super Bowl Whatever, the little dallas cowpokes will do the on-the-back-legs-up thing, sure as shootin’.

God knows they tried to get ‘er done this past weekend, showing their tighty whities on Saturday evening, setting the stage for the Iggles from Philly to pounce.  It was a complete team effort with rampant chemistry abounding, standing shoulder to shoulder, got yer backing for each other like hip hop rapsters, all for oneing and one for alling as they, to a man, sucked.  Equally and completely.  Now and forever more, world without end, amen, amen.

Tony Dimples gets outplayed by something called a Joeflacco.  T.O. loses six in the moonbeams.  Dimples overthrows Miles Austin or Austin Miles by six to eight inches for another lost six.  Meanwhile, the two slowest running backs in the NFL run for 77 and 82 yards against Mr. Fix It/Wade Phillips’ Three Four.   I don’t do research for free, but I’m betting no team in NFL history has given up back to back runs of 77 and 82 yards.  Meanwhile squared, Tony Dimples throws up a Mallard at the end of the half like a t-shirt shot out of a cannon at a Mavs game, only this one is special delivery for Ed Reed.  That’s the Ed Reed who catches better than Willie Mayes did.  It’s not the Roy Williams who doesn’t.   Either Roy Williams.   So Reed brings it back far enough that the Ravens can move into field goal range, which they do, with seconds remaining.  That was the field goal that put up the two extra points that Dallas was chasing all evening long.  Stupid.  Stupid.  Stupid.  Stupid.  Stupid.

Five sacks in the first half, so the Ravens decide to put in an extra offensive tackle to stymie DeMarcus Ware.  Not a running back or a tight end to chip Ware.  No, a tackle for the love of mike.  That’s six guys who can’t catch on the o-line plus the QB plus at least one running back, and Dallas defense can’t stop the dinking and dunking of the Joeflacco.

Well, yes they can, until it’s time for the Cowboys subordinary team to try to stop the Raven’s special team on a fake field goal.  As our companion Tom pointed out, in the Ravens’ prior field goal attempts, the Cowboys had put about fourteen guys to the left of the Ravens’ center and tried for the block.  So the Ravens’ holder, Sam Koch I believe, who is not the great singer, Sam Cook, ran to his left, which was the Pokes’ right, and might have scored had it not been for a total lack of running ability.  First down.  Another brilliant piece of work by Bruce Reid, the Cowboys Subordinary Teams Coach, who is arguably the worst special teams coach in the history of organized football.  And then Anthony Henry, the guy who audits receivers from the cornerback position, allowed Derrick Mason to run free in the end zone.  Mason was carrying his left arm like he’d taken one in the shoulder at the Battle of Chicamauga, but nonetheless, you can’t let him run free in the end zone.  See, the problem with that is the end zone is where points are scored, and it’s a real bad place to let receivers run free.  Fiddle di dee, said Scarlett, I’ll worry about that tomorrow.  One more tomorrow and those guys will be hitting the golf courses at Cabo.  Jessica, Baa-Bee!!!

I hate the Cowboys.  Hate ‘em.  They’re dead to me.  They’re like brother Fredo was to Michael Corleone.  “Fredo, you’re nothing to me now.  You’re not a brother, you’re not a friend.  I don’t want to know you or what you do.  I don’t want to see you at the hotels, I don’t want to see you near my house.”  (I also like “Take the gun, leave the cannoli.”  But I couldn’t work it in.)

But if they beat Philly, I’ll be back on the bandwagon, just begging those blaggards to break my heart one more time.  I’m just an NFL slut.

I mean, after all, why even go to a therapist?  You can run through every emotion following those clowns.  Absolute dejection after the Steelers game, to go up there, in that weather, under those conditions, and play that well against that defense, mano a mano, tough it out, only to blow it in the last minute or so.  Glee and promise after pounding the New York Football Giants here a week ago Sunday.  And then acrid, toxic, bitter tasting defeat to the Ravens, a team with an offense scripted by Poe.

Meanwhile cubed, I believe we mentioned the Iggles and their chance after Dallas’ double dribbled to pounce and take charge of the last wild card slot, but ooooh noooo, the Iggles lost to the Redskins, doormats to the Cinti Bengals a week before.  So the Iggles are still a half game behind the Pokes because the Iggles were tied by the same, NFC East-wrecking Cincinnati Bengals.  And then the TBucs rallied their defense to hold the Chargers, recently 4 - 8, to 41 points, in a home loss that breathed life into the diplodocus known as the little dallas cowpokes.  (I keep thinking of poor, old John McKay, coach of the TBucs in their first season when they went 0 - 14, only because they didn’t play 16 games a year back then.  After a loss, he was asked by a reporter what he thought of his team’s execution, and McKay replied, “I’m all for it.”)

One last thought, or what is now passing for thought.  I apologize and wish to set the record straight.  For a number of years, I have been thinking and saying that The Jerry is a bad General Manager but a good owner because he’ll do about anything and spend about anything to bring a winner here, to take his team to victory at the Super Bowl.  I was wrong.  I was right in that The Jerry is a bad General Manager, especially if I can append “really, really” in front of “bad.”  But he’s not a good owner.  He’s a bad owner.  He’s hired incompetents as coaches since The Jimster, with a four year exception of The Tuna, who for all his faults, which were several, at least browbeat the loser mentality out of this team.  But The Jerry couldn’t control The Tuna, and that made it an impossible situation here.  Plus The Tuna had worn out his welcome, i.e., that style is okay for a while, but like using Boraxo for hand soap, it get’s real old after a while.  So The Jerry hires Buttercup Puffalump, who is so happy to have another shot at a head coaching job he’s willing to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight, and that’s what we’ve had for the last two years.  The Jerry, who is incompetent as a General Manager but must have photo negatives of the Owner’s naughty bits to have kept his job for so long, can only be happy with a head coach he can buffalo.  Those of us who follow the little dallas cowpokes are screwed, forever damned to NFL Hell, at least until The Jerry goes away.  We can only hope that The Stephen, The Jerry’s older son, will at some point rescue us from this lunacy.  The Jerry stinks as a GM and he stinks as an owner.  Not Bidwell stinky or Bengals/Mike Brown stinky, but close.  Watch him remain as Owner/GM until he’s eighty years old, morphing into a Dallas version of Oakland’s Al Davis, everyone’s favorite owner.  With The Jerry, it’s Walt Kelly/Pogo time: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Remember, if you don’t see concrete evidence of a plan, don’t assume there is a plan.  Don’t be thinking that those guys in authority must know what they’re doing and must have info you don’t have, so just let them have their head and keep on keeping on.  Nope, if you don’t see concrete evidence of a plan, don’t assume there is a plan.  The little dallas cowpokes don’t have a plan.  And The Jerry is a 18 yard deep out behind that, i.e., not only does he not have a plan, he doesn’t have a clue.  Doomed, I say.  Doomed.  Sigh.

p.s.  Gotta love the irony and humor in the fact that the little dallas cowpokes were platformed for this win-and-you’re-in game at Philly only because they beat the TBucs here, 13 - 9, under the QBing of Brad “Bull” Johnson.  Ol’ Brad is way past his prime, but had he not bus-driven that game to a win, the Pokes would be also rans already.  This way, with Johnson’s win, we get to stretch it out, so the pain is max.

Too bad the collapsing Cowboys can’t play December as well as the streaking Bengals.  MOre to come after the sedatives wear off . . .

While giving thanks for the bounty in my life last week, I forgot to give thanks for not having the NFL Network, thus sparing me from the Chargers/Rahdahs game tonight.  Doubt you could even drink that game good looking.

On behalf of the little dallas cowpokes, we’d like to give a shout out to Plaxico Burris for creating such a stir that The Jerry was able to sneak Pacman Jones back onto the active roster without so much as a national sports media peep.  Let’s hope The Pac won’t take this as an affront and feel the need to reestablish his glitter amongst the pole dancers of the world . . . and that’s not a national origin thing.

1.)  Money was lost last weekend by Matt Cassel.  Or Cassell.  Does it matter anymore?  Free agent next season, and it would have been nice for him to have done something against the Steelers, at home, with playoffs on the line.  Maybe the Pats won’t be cutting Perfect Tommy this offseason and going with Matt after all.

2.)  I was getting set to write something nice about The Dairy Queen after the Jets upset the Titans, but I thought I’d give it another week.  Oops.  Is The Dairy Queen going to become like all those tupperwared Thanksgiving leftovers, ready to be thrown out in a week or so?  Stuffing is sooo good on Thanksgiving Day, but after a couple of weeks and that green, fuzzy stuff starts growing on it . . . I donno.  What will we see with The Dairy Queen?

3.)  A game or two ago, I read in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram that the Pokes are 91 - 91 since the start of the 1997 season.  I don’t know if that works mathematically, but if it’s even close, it’s the definition of dull normal.  I guess the end of the 1996 season is about when the mojo effect from The Jimster finally petered out, and the unmojo of The Jerry began petering in.

4.)  Good line from Tim Calishaw (sp?) of the Dallas Morning News recently, saying that until recently, the worst news in Dallas was on the business pages, but with the Cowboy’s resurrection by the second coming of Tony Dimples, the worst news had transferred over to the sports pages.  But Tony Dimples is back, and the little dallas cowpokes are 3 - 0 with him at QB, even though that includes the Niners and Seahawks.  But hey, the 11 - 1 Giants get to play the Niners and Seahawks this year as well.

5.)  Speaking of such things, i.e., good teams beating bad teams, I wish I could remember the stat from the Steelers in their glory daze in the 1970’s.  It was something like the Steelers being 50 - 5 against teams with .500 or worse records.  Don’t know that 50 and 5 work out mathematically, but the idea was that the Steelers beat the whey out of the appy-cray teams, and by so doing, only had to play about .500 ball against the good teams ~~ something the Pokes might have wanted to think about when they played the worst team in football not named the Detroit Lions and lost to them in St. Louis.

6.)  I’ve not heard any more about this idea, but perhaps the reason Goodell didn’t suspend Pacman Jones for good or banish him from football forever was because Pacman was, so we’re told, at an alcohol rehab facility and the Americans with Disabilities Act frowns on employers firing employees coming out of alcohol rehab.

7.)  Speaking of Pacman, the Pokes have announced that he will return punts against Pittsburgh.  Pac.  Pokes.  Punts.  Pittsburgh.  That’s a lot of “p’s” in a sentence about Adam without using the other p-word, “pole,” as in Pole dancing.  Watch him quickly.  He may not be here for long.

8.)  How ’bout that Plaxico?  Shot himself through the thigh and didn’t hit anything but muscle.  Likely could have had the same result with a head shot.  Soooo, would The Jerry be enough of a nutcase to inquire about Plaxico?