Dallas Cowboys: Brutal reality check for Cowboys last Sunday

The Indianapolis Colts dominated the Dallas Cowboys and ended their five-game winning streak with a 23-0 victory. The loss forces the Cowboys to refocus and get back to winning.

The Dallas Cowboys were whipped and soundly beaten by the Indianapolis Colts in another must-win game for this team. Instead of the Cowboys beating the Colts and winning the NFC East, the Cowboys reverted back to bad habits and had their winning streak snapped at five games.

Losing to the Colts is one thing, but to get shut out by the Colts to the tune of 23-0 is totally unacceptable on so many levels. And to lose a game of this magnitude this late in the season means this team was unprepared mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Everyone wants to know how in the hell did the Cowboys not score any points? Nada! Zilch! That’s an easy one. Ready?

The brutal reality check is that the Cowboys aren’t as good as they believe they are. The Cowboys aren’t a dynamic, once in a lifetime football team that scores 60 points a game and scares the living hell out of its opponents.

And to Garrett’s credit, the clapping ginger bread man did go for it on fourth down five times against the Colts. Maybe Garrett did understand the importance of beating the Colts but his team didn’t get the memo.

This Dallas team is not the same as the Super Bowl-winning ones under former head coach Jimmy Johnson. Those teams were so talented that Michael Irving and others could party all night into the early morning hours and win big time on Sunday afternoon (remember the infamous off White House for players only?).

Another brutal reality check is that Dallas is an overachieving team with mediocre coaching at best. Dallas won five consecutive games because its season was on the brink of destruction, offensive coordinator Scott Linehan was about to get fired, Jason Garrett was on the hot seat, and now Dallas seems to be the ultimate underdogs moving forward.

No team plays better in the NFL as underdogs than Dallas, especially with the level of talent on this roster.

Now before I contradict myself, I do want to point out this is a talented team, a rather good team. I’m aware the defense is top-5 in the NFL and so forth, and that Dallas has the best running back in the league with Ezekiel Elliott, along with elite wideout Amari Cooper to boot.

But with inconsistent coaching, outdated schemes, and being dreadful at situational football, Dallas is more like the team we witnessed on Sunday than the one that won five games in a row. As sportdfw.com writer Daniel Ruppert so eloquently mentioned in his article, Dallas wins “in spite of Linehan, not because of him”.

Daniel is referring to Cooper and Dak Prescott changing a play at the line scrimmage and a few seconds later connecting on a 75-yard touchdown against the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s sad these two young players had the guts to make a game-changing play instead of Linehan doing it.

The sad reality is Dallas played as if they knew the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles were going to lose their respective games to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Los Angeles Rams. If the Skins and Eagles had lost, Dallas wins the NFC East and walks into the playoff with no drama.

Instead, as we now know, that scenario didn’t happen.

And boys and girls, that’s why Dallas lost to the Colts because they had zero motivation to beat them. However, there was so much to gain if the Cowboys beat the Colts last Sunday. Dallas still had an opportunity to win and leapfrog the Chicago Bears for the third seed in the NFC playoffs.