Dallas Cowboys: shallow victories ring meaningless and hollow

The Dallas Cowboys dominated the Bengals in a game that meant nothing.

Full disclosure: I fell asleep midway through the third period of the Dallas Cowboys win against the Cincinnati Bengals yesterday. Truth be told, the affair had been largely decided by that point. It happens when a hapless team fumbles the ball away on their first three possessions against an equally hapless bunch.

If there’s any credit to go around, I suppose the Cowboys deserve it for converting those turnovers into points. That hasn’t always been a given. But I’m having a difficult time remembering being so underwhelmed by such a dominant win, and I’ve been intently watching the inner machinations of this franchise for about four decades now.

Yes, that would’ve made me six-years-old. My earliest concrete memories of this team date back to the first of the three consecutive NFC Championship losses back in the halcyon Danny White days. I’ve been keeping extensive tabs on this production for quite some time. Bottom line, I’m completely unimpressed by yesterday’s 30-7 victory.

Look, I’m not here to disparage the overall effort. The Cowboys took advantage of opposition mistakes and removed all doubt from the proceedings in time for me to take a rainy-day snooze. I guess it beats being angry about certain sides of the ball and their collective level of give-a-darn. It was nice to remove that from the equation for an afternoon.

More from Dallas Cowboys

I get it. The object is to win games. Furthermore, the Cowboys are still chasing the ever-decreasing and improbable notion of a playoff berth. We can’t expect the clown ringmaster to strive for anything less. But realistically, every win from here on out only slips them further down the draft order. Given their proclivities for having no year-to-year plan, it’s safe to assume that Dallas will do nothing to address what truly ails them, and that is the fact that they can’t consistently play defense. Sure, they had their moments yesterday, but we’re a scant week away from the head coach questioning the effort level. They had to win. Anything less brings wholesale changes into play.

But shouldn’t change be in the discussion anyway? There have been occurrences this year alone where the dreaded “Q-word” has crossed the lips of pundits and fans alike. This franchise is exactly one year into the Mike McCarthy era, and there have been legitimate questions regarding whether or not this team has quit on a few occasions. Wasn’t the current plight supposed to be all former head coach Jason Garrett’s fault? It doesn’t appear that anything has changed from last year to now.

Next. Dallas Mavericks: Bold predictions for the season’s first half. dark

No, this thing smells from the top down. We all know it. A dumb win in Cincinnati doesn’t do anything to mask the stench. It’s as if they were shamed into simply trying. No, this organization has had no real plan for decades now, yet we’re the ones who continue to buy into it every year. Yesterday was the anomaly against a horrible team, and Dak Prescott or no Dak Prescott, there’s no reason to believe in any significant change coming soon.

Published on 12/14/2020 at 12:01 PM
Last updated at 12/14/2020 at 11:23 AM

Home/Dallas Cowboys