By GIL LeBRETON
glebreton@star-telegram.com
Judging from the postgame celebration, which included a veritable Jones-fest in the visiting owner’s suite, you would have thought something truly special had happened.
Like, maybe, beating the Eagles. Or winning a game in December. Or winning a playoff game ... period.
But no, this was a dog pile of the vanities. These were the Dallas Cowboys, whooping it up because they had just cheated the hangman.
Dogs will be dogs, I guess. The Cowboys couldn’t help themselves. The Kansas City Chiefs are winless and stand 2-28 in their past 30 games.
If the Chiefs only knew how to tackle, who knows what Sunday’s outcome might have been?
Apparently, though, don’t expect the Cowboys to apologize. A win is a win, as they have heard their head coach say again and again.
By Monday afternoon, coach Wade Phillips had already gathered Sunday’s negatives into a neat pile. How ’bout that Tony Romo, Phillips was still saying.
Yeah. How’ bout him?
After a week of bitter public scrutiny, quarterback Romo found receiver Miles Austin with the two passes that decided Sunday’s outcome. Owner Jerry Jones was moved enough to single out Romo for answering his critics.
Well, we’ll be the judge of that.
Romo completed 20 of 34 passes for 351 yards, but the fact remains that for the first 57 minutes Sunday against the NFL’s worst team, the Cowboys’ offense produced exactly one touchdown. The receivers dropped some of Romo’s passes — even the day’s hero, Austin, dropped two potential scoring throws.
But otherwise, continuing a season-long theme, Romo threw enough passes too high or too far behind receivers to flame concerns. What is he going to do when he again faces an NFL-quality pass rush?
Phillips preferred to take Romo’s day at face value. He empathized, even.
"No matter what you say, if you don’t listen to criticism, it still affects you some," Phillips said. "Tony came through with shining colors. The guy played a great game.
"This was really important for the team, for Tony. He was on target, he moved around the pocket, and he made plays. He had no interceptions, so what a day he had."
Again, though, there was no mention that it only came against the Chiefs.
The Cowboys raised their record to 3-2. The combined record of the three teams the Cowboys have defeated is 1-13. The fear at Valley Ranch should be that they’ve found their niche.
Jones tried to parry any discussion Sunday of what might have been, other than to concede that a defeat could have sounded some alarms. He neither said nor implied anything about changing coaches.
What sort of coach, however, spends his whole week listening to the public rumblings and then sends his football team out so mentally ill-prepared?
Are the Cowboys that bad or that apathetic?
The answer may be both. Watching them Sunday play the lowly Chiefs on mostly even terms, the Cowboys appeared to be a team that had hummed its way through a week of uninspired practices.
On the other hand, they lack star power, especially on defense.
Phillips countered, "Our rush was pretty good. If you go back to last year’s team, it pressured the quarterback pretty well. We’re getting back to that point."
He said he would stress that an effort such as Sunday’s is not good enough.
"That’s what we tell them," Phillips said. "You tell them that. You point out the things we need to do better, and we work on those things. Especially this week, we’re going to work hard on our 2-minute defense. We’ve got to get better in that.
"And our red-zone offense, certainly we’ve got to keep working on that."
But again, Phillips made no excuses for his team celebrating its overtime win. On the contrary, he said that winning in overtime — never mind the opponent — could be a catalyst that propels the Cowboys onward.
"Those are things where you start trusting each other," Phillips said, "believing in each other that somebody is going to make a play. Somebody is going to come through for you.
"I’d rather not have the close game, certainly. But I do think that feeling in the dressing room after the ball game brought us closer together."
And there’s the problem.
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7760
Looking for comments?
Share
@Nyx.CommentBody@