The Cowboys are doing just fine, so back off.

I'm a little confused. People seem to be going off the "What's with the Cowboys?" deep end. Today Matt Mosely, ESPN's blogger for the NFC East, posted a story about how the 'Boys need a reality check, because apparently they cry and whine too much and expect to be treated like champions while refusing to acknowledge that they aren't playing like it.

Today at school the first friend who greeted me, a fellow Cowboys fan, said, "Man, what's with our Cowboys?" My boss at work welcomed me with, "The Cowboys escaped!" I'm confused.

Of the five games the Cowboys have played this season, they have looked truly great in one of them. It was week two and they beat Philadelphia in a shootout at home. The other four weeks they looked average at best. Yet after their week 3 victory over the Packers at Lambeau Field, most of the analysts were ready to crown them Super Bowl champs. So were many other football followers, Cowboys fans or not. After those first three wins, the 'Boys lost (by two points, mind you) to a now obviously very good Redskins team. They didn't look bad, they just looked as average as they had in two of the first three weeks and got served their first loss. Yesterday they looked just fine again (by "fine" I mean not great and still with a lot of work to do, but not bad by any stretch of the imagination).

Friend: There's nothing "with" our Cowboys, other than a completely normal need to improve in certain areas of their game. Ask any other team in the league if they have anything they could work on and see what they say.

Boss: I don't think a game can be called an "escape" when 1) the 'Boys never trailed and 2) the margin of victory was nine points (that's TWO scores... a great play as time expires wouldn't even have made a difference).

Mosely makes a big deal that the Cowboys are the NFC East's third best team (I think he means it in a bad way), but when this week's power rankings come out tomorrow, you can bet Dallas will be in the top five in the entire league. I guess I just don't see what all the fuss is about. The Cowboys have to put some serious work into certain parts of their game. There's no doubt about that. But consider the fact that the East will provide both NFC wild cards for the playoffs this year, hands down. To be third in the division is still plenty good enough. And don't forget there's a LONG way to go this year, and no one's won anything yet.

At the end of the day, the Cowboys are 4-1, which is a tie for the second-best record in football. I don't think there needs to be a whole lot of panic.