DALLAS — Perhaps it is the fear that this season’s Christmas stockings, just like a year ago, will be filled only with holiday woe. Or maybe it’s the sense that another slide will lead to a scarier specter than anything Dickens could ever conjure up — a January trip to Green Bay and another potential Ice Bowl for the NFC championship.
Whatever the reason, after spending much of the season as the eminently viable option to the New England Patriots as football’s best game, the Dallas Cowboys find themselves stumbling to the regular-season finish and dealing with questions about what’s gone wrong. A 10-6 home loss to Philadelphia on Sunday will do that.
“Everybody’s down now, but you don’t know what it will mean later,” linebacker Greg Ellis said shortly after Sunday’s debacle. “If we use it as a wake-up call, it’s great. If we allow it to be a hindrance, say, ‘We didn’t play good and we can’t recover from this,’ then it’s a problem.”
By itself, a late-season loss to a proud division rival wouldn’t necessarily raise eyebrows, especially for a team whose record “fell” to 12-2. But the loss to the Eagles comes on the heels of an uneven performance in a come-from-behind 28-27 win over Detroit the previous week.
Add to that the knowledge that a year ago Dallas also looked like the team to beat in the NFC before losing three of five games in December, then stumbling in the opening round of the playoffs.
Entering Saturday’s game at Carolina, there’s also growing uncertainty about the health of quarterback Tony Romo, who injured his right thumb during the Eagles game. Throw it all together and what it all adds up to is a lot of teams in the conference — from the Packers, also 12-2 and very much in the mix for home-field advantage, to the wild-card hopeful Minnesota Vikings — thinking there’s a whole lot less to fear in Big D than a few weeks ago.
“We’ve given them hope? Hope for what, that they make the playoffs?” wide receiver Patrick Crayton said. “I don’t think anyone thought we were invincible; everyone we play thinks they can beat us. It’s not about them; it’s about the guys in this locker room, the ones with the stars on their helmets. It’s about what we do.”
Crayton added the Cowboys’ December follies the past 10 years are part of “another era.” But in some ways, it seems the only thing that has changed is the blond singer on the arm of the quarterback. Before Romo and his public dalliances with Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson, Troy Aikman was spotted hanging out with Lorrie Morgan.
The difference is, Aikman won three Super Bowls in four years, the last in January 1996. Since, Dallas has won but a single playoff game, the most recent heartache coming in last season’s wild-card round when Romo muffed a snap on a game-winning field-goal attempt versus Seattle.
For much of this season, that kind of agony seemed in the past. While the Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady have cast an immense shadow over the NFL, there are some around the league who felt that if anyone could match up with New England, it was the Cowboys. Even in their 48-27 loss to the Pats in October, Dallas could take some hope from the fact they led in the third quarter.
And, before Sunday’s clunker, the Cowboys were averaging more than 32 points a game, second only to New England, and had scored at least 24 points in every game.
“It’s one of the better offensive teams in the league for sure,” Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson said. “They’ve got so many really good skilled players. We just happened to have a really good day against them.”
It doesn’t seem likely that kind of star power would be harnessed often, and augers well for an extended postseason run. Which is why Cowboys owner Jerry Jones would prefer to attribute the poor showing the past two weeks as little more than a hiccup.
“I know in the NFL there are days when things just don’t work for you, and that’s what this has been,” Jones said. “I’m going to give a lot of the credit to Detroit and Philadelphia. They both played real well against us. But when you’re 12-2, instead of being 13-1, really, how frustrated can you be? It’s still in our control to be 14-2 with home-field advantage and a bye at the start of the playoffs.”
If that happens, the Cowboys won’t have to worry about the frozen tundra at Lambeau Field, and perhaps any lingering self-doubts will be eliminated as well.
“We’ve had a aura building around us, and you can’t let one loss take away everything that you’ve built up all season,” Ellis said. “The thing about the playoffs, though, is that everybody has a chance, anybody can lose. Hopefully, we learn whatever we can from these games and take those lessons into the playoffs and go from there with it.”
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com
