Dallas Cowboys are rolling, but the clouds of December loom

By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL

IRVING — Forget spoils. Expectations go to NFL victors nowadays, a double-edged parting gift for a job well done.

So game on, Cowboys.

Time to discover if this team can live up to the hype created by Sunday’s big victory against The Hated Eagles. Because you do not go into Philly and out-defense, out-big play, gulp, yes even out-coach a group that had just pummeled NYG, on national TV no less, without creating an expectation you will do so again, and in big games, and in December, and in the playoffs, deep into the playoffs.

What Sunday did was prove the Cowboys do not have a talent problem, or a RHG play-calling problem, or a life-after-T.O. problem, or a Romo problem, or any of the excuses/explanations/blame given for them not being better.

What they have battled is a finish problem and turning that around has to begin with a good game Sunday in Green Bay and deep into December.

Are they ready for this?

"This [Philly] game was foreshadowing for me," Cowboys linebacker Bradie James said. "If we would have gone in and lost, the December cloud just builds."

Coach Wade bristles at talk of December, his touchy side engaged.

"I get tired of hearing that. I do," he said before launching into reasons why what happened in 2007 was not a late-season collapse and regurgitating that Dallas has won a lot of big, clutch games.

Coach Wade deserves a break for what he did in Philly, so I’ll just have to agree to disagree. In my mind, this team has a finishing problem, or as James called it "the December cloud." It is less about the month and more about how they come down the stretch.

"Whether it’s December or not, we will always have the December cloud over our head," James said. "The only way we can right our wrongs is to win and maintain a balance."

Fact is, with Philly handled at The Linc and NYG tanking spectacularly and Washington wader-deep in all kinds of dysfunction, your Dallas Cowboys have become favorites to win this beastly NFC East.

So can they finish?

Because we have seen this before, a Cowboys team looking so good and so unbeatable in October and November. Such potential seduces everybody into thinking, "This year will be different," or "Why not us?"

And as Big Bill liked to say: Consider yourself sucked [in].

I admit I am. I am really starting to believe in this team because I looked onto that field Sunday and watched a team.

"There are lots of games where we had meltdowns. Now guys know 'You be the one to go make the play so we won’t have a meltdown and won’t come home wondering what went wrong,’ " James said. "Being the midpoint, you want to know who you can rely on when the funk hits the fan. And we know we can rely on each other."

Jay Ratliff has proven reliable. Forget beast. He’s a best.

With apologies to DeMarcus Ware, Ratliff is the best player on the Cowboys’ defense right now. And enough of this Keith Brooking talk, Ratliff is also the heart and soul of this defense.

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