Can Cowboys measure up to Falcons?

Posted Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009 Comments   (0) Print Share Share Reprints
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By RANDY GALLOWAY

rgalloway@star-telegram.com

galloway Jerry talked about it being a game to establish credibility. Wade talked about it being an opportunity for the rest of us to finally admit the Cowboys beat an NFL somebody.

Not that long ago in dog years, this might have been the Atlanta Falcons’ motivational message to themselves for today. It hasn’t even been a season and a half since the entire franchise was all Vicked up.

Then out of nowhere, football guys with names like Tom Dimitroff and Mike Smith (honk if you’d ever heard of either one) showed up in the Deep South, and have quickly made the work of a general manager and a head coach seem far less difficult than the ongoing local wilderness adventure would indicate.

The 4-1 Falcons, after an 11-win season a year ago, arrive for the 3:15 kickoff in Arlington with a legitimate team. The Cowboys? I’ll get back to you on that about 6:15.

But in a rare show of personal benevolence, let’s say straight up that Mr. Jones is right and coach Phillips is right. Measuring up to the Falcons is a critical late-October exam for the Cowboys, and, yes, the biggest game to date, and not just because it’s the next game.

Because if the "next game" was against Tampa Bay again, or Kansas City again, or Carolina again, it wouldn’t be the same kind of W, if there was a W. The Falcons are a somebody. As opposed to those nobodies.

Along about now, as Mr. Jones said, the Cowboys need to show they can beat a somebody, after coconut-cutting losses along the way to the Giants and Broncos.

Media-wise, I even read and heard it more than once last week, that although the season is not yet at the halfway point, the Cowboys’ postseason chances ride on today’s outcome.

My answer:

What’s that? Ah — Playoffs? Don’t talk about — Playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game. Another game.

Well said, I’d say, and the thanks for the inspiration, and the direct quote, goes to Jim Mora of beer commercial fame, for his famous postgame rant as coach of the Indianapolis Colts in 2001.

If you chart the tiebreaker math, based on the current course of NFC teams, there’s a formula to suggest the Cowboys could lose today and already be basically eliminated from postseason consideration. Maybe.

But far beyond that, the Cowboys need to win this game to get the collective noggins refilled with positive vibes, which they will say at Valley Ranch is already the case, except how can it be?

No matter how much the Irving compound attempts to shut out a doubting fandom and media, a negative fog always seeps through.

As former Falcon, and aren’t we darn happy to have him here, Keith Brooking said a couple of weeks ago, with a tad of shock, "expectations here are not realistic." Something about even a win in Kansas City bringing rip jobs and hoots.

Hey, Keith, welcome, man, to the Cowboys.

By the way, Brooking, who spent the first 11 years of his NFL life with the Falcons, presents the most graphic example of where these two franchises now stand, particularly after the Falcons made such an amazingly quick recovery from the dog day hell of the Mike Vick mess.

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