The Cowboys extended their winning streak to four games on Thursday against the Dolphins!
By Matt Noonan
How would one describe the Dallas-Miami game on Thanksgiving Day?
Is there even a word other than “Wow” or “Amazing” that could be used to describe the ugly and epic outcome?
OK, we might need to rearrange the word to be something like, “thankful” or “lucky,” but if you’re a Dallas Cowboys supporter, I’m sure you’re breathing a little easier than a few hours ago, right?
The Cowboys are like the Boston Red Sox. They’re a good team on paper and should smoke their opponents, but instead, they like to lie down to underachieving squads like the Miami Dolphins and Washington Redskins.
On Thursday, the Cowboys had no reason to lose to the Fish, and even though they won, it certainly seems like they lost.
“It’s hard to win in the NFL. Miami has been playing very well recently and had some big wins and they came in here and we knew it was going to be a 60-minute battle against those guys,” said Dallas head coach Jason Garrett via the team’s website.
“Well we’ve obviously been in that situation a few times this year and we’ve been successful a number of times now and we kind of know some of the things we like to do and depending upon what the defense is doing obviously, and when you need a field goal, it’s kind of be aggressive, be aggressive, and once you get in position, it’s time to throttle back a little bit and obviously give the o-line and DeMarco [Murray] a chance to just set it up, and they did a great job of that [on Thursday],” said quarterback Tony Romo via the team’s website.
Dallas did a great job of grinding out their seventh win, but a victory against Miami shouldn’t be a sign of greatness or something to boast about, right?
The Cowboys allowed the Dolphins to rally and take a lead, while Romo and the offense practically spent the entire third quarter on the bench watching Miami’s gunslinger, Matt Moore and running back Reggie Bush look like perennial all-stars against Roby Ryan’s defense. However, when the fourth quarter rolled around, the Cowboys miraculously mustered 10 critical points to secure the win, and Romo’s fifth victory on Thanksgiving.
“I thought a lot of guys just kind of hung in there, and as a quarterback, I thought Tony did a really good job just playing through this game. A couple turnovers early on in the game, a little bit of out of rhythm and he just kind of kept hanging in there,” said Garrett.
Perhaps this particular game was Romo’s coming out party or maybe it’s a sign that Dallas needs to be taken seriously for the remainder of the season? Hey, this is the Dallas Cowboys, “America’s Team,” and if we’ve learned something over the past two weeks, it’s that the Boys will battle for 60-minutes and grind out wins.
“[Thursday’s game], it’s a “W,” it counts in the win column, and at the end of the year, those things will add up, and that’s what will be talked about when the season’s over, these “w’s,” what your record was, what you did in the playoffs, what you did at the end of the year,” said Romo. “It’s about winning, [and] that’s what we’re in this job for is to go out here, play, [and] we’re lucky enough to do it and we’re blessed to be in this position, but what makes it really enjoyable is winning when you’re doing it and it’s fun right now when you’re winning a couple in a row.”
The Cowboys will certainly enjoy 10-days of rest before heading to the desert to face Arizona, another underachieving squad. If the Cowboys are who we think they are, then it’s expected to watch Dallas win against a bad team that’ll challenge their defense and force Romo to make mistakes. Yet, when the final whistle blows, expect Dallas to walk off the field with either a one, two or three point victory.
Dallas might be onto something and Romo may have officially found his mojo too.
