By RANDY GALLOWAY
rgalloway@star-telegram.com
In Monday’s big-picture aftermath, perspective and perception at Valley Ranch were spinning like a Las Vegas roulette wheel.
If you bet the zero, you win.
The "they aren’t who we thought they were" Dallas Cowboys returned from Green Bay, and also returned to a "who are they, what are they" place in the NFL pecking order.
Let’s go back to zero. Start all over again on the Cowboys. Particularly on the offensive side, where games are won in today’s NFL.
While every Sunday in the league there are outcomes that mystify, and this was one of them, it is basically a touchdown-driven process.
You can hang in with defense, but moving the ball and putting up points is the obvious formula for success, which is what the honchos want, and why the rules have been so dramatically changed over the years to give us that.
Certainly there are exceptions. See the Bengals at Pittsburgh on Sunday. What old friend Mike Zimmer is doing with that defense in Cincy is the best coaching work in the league this season.
But even The Great Belichick of New England made the dumbest (either that or the most arrogant) coaching decision of the weekend, because Bill obviously didn’t trust his once proud defense. Not even all those Lombardis can excuse Belichick for that loss in Indy.
I did notice Monday morning that the Vegas line had the Cowboys as a 12-point favorite for the return home Sunday against the Redskins. A week ago, that kind of huge spread would have seemed about right. At the moment, however, all bets are off.
Going into the road swing, a split of the Philly and Green Bay visits would have been acceptable. Greed, of course, comes into play once the Cowboys were impressive in the win over the Eagles. And besides, the Packers appeared dead. Desperate but dead.
Then the Cowboys’ offense took 60 minutes to hang up seven points, and was fortunate to get that in the final seconds to avoid a shutout.
If it’s any consolation, the only guy in Green Bay more confused than the combo of Jason Garrett and Tony Romo was referee Jeff Triplette, who needed a crash course on the "challenge" rules.
As much as I like the replay system in the NFL, which seems to make wrongs right about 90 percent of the time, it is amazing that some of the most obvious and critical mistakes can’t even be reviewed because of limitations on the replay rules.
But this loss wasn’t about officiating. This loss was about how well the Packers played on defense, and about how simple the Packers made it look.
The Dom Capers plan:
He put his best defender, cornerback Charles Woodson on tight end Jason Witten most of the time. Watching that, I went "wow." That’s bold.
Woodson not only snuffed Witten, he was sensational in making critical plays all over the field, including the blindside sack on Tony Romo that caused a lost fumble (Flozell Adams appeared to have blown the blocking assignment), although Felix Jones had the legit recovery, and replay couldn’t save the Cowboys.
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