Dallas Cowboys Fans Can Forget About the Playoffs

A star is dying.

That’s an exaggeration of sorts. The bright blue star on the helmets of the Dallas Cowboys has the resiliency of Nicolas Cage’s movie career.

No number of bad performances can seem to dampen the following of pro football’s perennial darlings. Dallas looked awful last night in its 34-7 loss to the Eagles on Sunday night, and I mean awful. I'm talking National Treasure awful.

Give credit to Philadelphia for showing up in prime time. Michael Vick ran right through the heart of the Cowboys defense, completing a Rodgers-esque 75 percent of his passes.

LeSean McCoy ran for 185 yards. Chaz Henry, the Eagles punter, probably had time to finish “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” on the sideline and half of “The Help.”

Dallas hasn’t looked like a championship caliber team in some time. The franchise has won one playoff game since 1996 and finished last season at 6-10. The Sunday night loss leaves them at 3-4. The company in the NFC East notwithstanding, Philly and Washington also share the Cowboys’ record. Dallas is on the outside of the NFC playoffs looking in.

Before we dig the grave too deep here, the Cowboys haven’t been that bad. They had six winning seasons before moving into their new stadium last fall. Jason Witten might be the best tight end in the game, and Dez Bryant is an up-and-coming star at wideout.

I don’t have football savvy to say whether or not players like these and defensive tackle Jay Ratliff and outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware constitute a nucleus, but they are workable pieces to the championship puzzle.

One piece that does need to be worked over—seriously—stands under center. For all of his effortless charm in front of the camera, Tony Romo comes off as the guy who’s just happy to be in the NFL. In a league where success is measured by championships, Romo has done little else than revive the Starter brand from its burial ground in the 1990s.

Romo, to paraphrase an oft-cited characterization, is a gosh-darn star. He looks great in those postgame interviews explaining how his team just needs to get a little bit better. Why not stick with your strengths?

By the numbers, Romo isn’t awful. He’s ninth in the league in passing yards and 12th in completion percentage, but his non-quantifyable flubs eclipse all of that. Those images of Romo fumbling at the goal line in the Jets game in Week 1 will follow him around for the rest of the season, fairly or unfairly.

While quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Drew Brees have proven capable of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, Romo seems eager to feed those jaws like an illiterate kid at the zoo.

Is Romo the problem in Dallas? Not singularly. There’s no evidence that Jason Garrett isn’t in over his head as head coach, especially since he and defensive coordinator Rob Ryan seem to be dueling over the spotlight.

Ryan did his own coaching prospects no favors by letting the Michael Vick Redemption Parade trample his defense in stunning fashion. Garrett, on the other hand, hasn’t managed to crawl out of the “Great Coordinator, Bad Head Coach” bucket, one that ironically contains his predecessor, Houston Texans assistant Wade Phillips. Wade’s team currently sits atop the AFC South at 5-3.  

The problem with the Cowboys struggling is that this doesn’t really hurt their brand. Network executives and advertisers see the star and get stars in their eyes. The almost-always-overrated NFC East benefits from this as well.

No other group of teams, save college football’s Southeastern Conference, gets so much collective credit for having one or two contending teams followed by mediocre milquetoast.

But box office appeals aside, the Cowboys today are playing more like America’s Stepchildren than America’s Team. It might be too early to bury this team, but notions of dismissing them as a legitimate playoff contender are coming in right on time.