The Redskins: They ARE that bad.

An almost universally true statement in the NFL is that division road games are NEVER easy victories, even if it's the best team in a division against the worst. I think that last night was an illustration of when that statement is not true.

The Redskins are one of the worst teams I've ever watched play an NFL game. I think that if this Redskins team had faced last year's winless Lions sometime last season, Detroit would have won by 17 or more. They're awful. And showing not signs of improvement.

Even though Philadelphia lost a humiliating game to the Raiders last week, they looked like a team full of all-stars in Landover, MD last night.

DeMarcus Ware: A good deal for everyone

Todd Archer of Dallasnews.com reported an interesting tidbit regarding the pretty huge contract extension that the Cowboys just signed with DeMarcus Ware yesterday. Ware was asked if he felt he should have gotten more money (he probably could have, as an elite pass rusher, but this deal is still quite substantial). He answered, "You can't ask for too much money when you need other players in here and you know you've got to be able to build." That's an answer that means Ware understands the process, and is as concerned about contributing to a winning team as he is about making sure he makes more money than the other guy. I like that answer.

Let's Review

I understand that in many ways, I've got the proverbial rose-colored glasses when it comes to the Cowboys. I'm hopelessly optimistic regarding the team, and I tend not to see the struggles nearly as clearly as I see the triumphs. I admit that (not as a weakness, because I'm a fan, and I don't consider optimism to be a weakness of a fan, but I know that I can't consider myself an unbiased analyst either).

Nevertheless, let's consider this:

Prior to the season, expert analysis concluded that Dallas would finish this season anywhere between 7-9 and 10-6. That's pretty much what the expectations of the team were before any football had been played.

Week 1: Dallas beats Tampa Bay handily. Fine. That's what they were supposed to do.

Week 2: Dallas gets beat by the New York Giants (at the time considered to be one of the top two or three teams in the league) on a last-second field goal. All of a sudden, Dallas is terrible. They completely sucked, and Tony Romo will never be anything but a turnover machine who can't win a meaningful game. Among experts, the Cowboys stock plummets.

Week 3: Dallas defeats the 0-2 Carolina Panthers without too much drama on Monday night. Fine. That's what they were supposed to do.

Week 4: Dallas is beaten by the 3-0 (now 6-0) Denver Broncos at Invesco after giving up a late touchdown and then being unable to punch in a score even after driving all the way down the field in the final 1:46. The Cowboys are in "serious trouble" and aren't playing very well this season. Can't really do anything right. Among experts, the Cowboys stock plummets.

Week 5: Dallas defeats the winless Kansas City Chiefs in overtime. (I'll concede, you shouldn't need overtime to beat Kansas City if you're a real contender, but note a few things: 1. In the NFL, wins are tough to come by. Witness last week's Philadelphia Eagles collapse against the just-about-as-bad-as-the-Chiefs Oakland Raiders. 2. The size of the win means absolutely nothing when the season ends. 3. If you watched the game, Dallas never really felt like they were in real danger of getting beat. Even in overtime, when Kansas City won the toss and started with the ball, they never threatened to score.) Since it was such an ugly win, Dallas is mistake-prone and still can't get their act together. Among experts, if there was much lower to go, the Cowboys stock would have likely plummeted.

Week 6: Dallas has a bye. They sit at home and get healthy. Every other NFC East team gets beaten, including a humiliating Eagles loss to the Raiders, and a perhaps even more humiliating (they got KILLED) Giants loss to the Saints. Even so, Dallas slips two spots in ESPN's power rankings.

Preceding today's game against the Falcons: The Cowboys are a team stuck in the mud with a lack of playmaking at receiver, an inconsistent defense, an "Aw shucks" southern coach who should have remained a defensive coordinator for someone, and a Hollywood quarterback who'd rather have his picture taken than go a game without turning the ball over.

I guess what I mean by all this is, isn't this exactly what we should've expected thus far from a 7-9 to 10-6 team? Their losses were to unbeaten teams (Giants, Broncos), and both were extremely close, winnable games. I understand that the Cowboys are one of those franchises (like the New York Yankees) that completely polarizes people, but if a team is more or less mediocre, shouldn't they beat bad teams and lose to good teams? In other words, should we really have expected anything more from these guys?

Today Dallas beat a very good team, the Atlanta Falcons. The defense caused problems for Matt Ryan all day long. Tony Romo was something like 21-29 for 311 yards, 3 touchdowns, and no interceptions. The talk of the team is receiver Miles Austin who, in the last two games, has 16 catches for 421 yards. Re-read that. It's not a typo. That's an average of more than 26 yards per catch. The Falcons were 4-1 entering this game, and showing every sign of being a serious contender in the NFC race. Dallas defeated them 37-21, playing an all-around great game. Shouldn't this be the first thing that really surprises us about this team, and will they get credit for being, frankly, a little better than we thought? The Cowboys are now a game behind the Giants for first place in the NFC East (which will be either 1.5 games or just .5 games after the Giants game ends this evening).

I'll continue to be optimistic.

Welcome back to Green Bay, Mr. Favre

I know that the one (or two?) people who read this blog will enjoy this.

Apparently the Mayor of Green Bay, Wisconsin is soliciting suggestions for how the city can playfully welcome Bret Favre when the Vikings come to Lambeau to take on the Packers on November 1. Packers website Cheesehead.tv put together a small list of ideas back in August that you can find by clicking here. I think my favorite suggestion actually comes from the comments section of the linked post. Someone said, "The Packers should retire Favre's number 4 before the game... and then unretire it." Another suggestion I liked was to have the high school marching band from Benedict Arnold's birthtown perform at halftime. Or display a gigantic waffle in the shape of a number 4 outside the stadium. Or encourage all Packer fans to wear flip-flops to the game.

The Rundown

The Redskins might be the worst team in the league. Interesting fact: They haven't yet played a team with a win. They're 2-3, but both of their wins were desperate battles of Who's Worse?

The Saints might be the best team in the league.

The Vikings have the best running back in the league, and their 40 year-old quarterback is playing like he's 28. New Orleans and Minnesota don't face each other in the regular season. It's WAY too early to make speculations like this one, but if the two teams face each other in an NFC Championship game (at this point, that looks like a strong possibility) it'll be tough to make any kind of assessments or predictions about who might win and what the keys to the game will be.

If I were Wade Phillips I'd be trying to trade draft picks for more bye weeks. Yesterday the Cowboys sat at home and gained a half game on everyone in their division. Their new slogan should be, "At least we didn't lose!"

Not that I'm giving up on the Cowboys, but it's very fun to be living in Denver right now with how well the Broncos are performing. We're now three games into the 8-game stretch in the Broncos schedule that's supposed to expose them for the young team with the so-so quarterback and the wet-behind-the-ears 18 year-old coach (or at least that's what he looks like) that they are. So far all that's been exposed is that this is a tough team that doesn't seem like they're gonna give in to how they were supposed to play this season. The Broncos defeated a desperate Chargers team tonight, IN San Diego. It was a must-win for the Chargers. I watched the highlights and it pretty much looked like Philip Rivers got hit on 90-96% of his dropbacks in the second half.

Tom Brady looked like the 2007 version of himself. So did the rest of the Patriots as they beat the Titans by a I-had-to-do-a-double-take score of 59-0. That's not a typo. This stat from Peter King's MMQB column this morning: Last season through six games the Titans had given up 7 touchdowns. In a 36-minute stretch on Sunday they gave up 8 to the Pats.

How 'bout this other stat from the aforementioned column: The Phillies scored 11 runs in the NLCS game Sunday afternoon. The other Philadelphia sports team in action on Sunday, the Eagles, scored 9 against the Oakland Raiders. Funny.

The two unbeatens in the NFC, as mentioned above, won't play each other in the regular season. The two unbeatens in the AFC, the Broncos and Colts, do play each other at Lucas Oil Stadium on December 13, but I highly doubt that either of those teams will still be unbeaten when they clash.

The Bye Week

Sometimes the best thing you can do is just take a week off.

With the Cowboys idle this week on their Bye, they gained a half game on all three of their division foes. The Giants suffered their first loss in a 48-27 drubbing in New Orleans (it wasn't that close). The Redskins continued their bid to be regarded as one of the league's worst teams by providing Kansas City with its first win of the season in a game that had ZERO touchdowns. And in probably the most embarrassing loss for the NFC East this week, the Eagles dropped a game to, of all teams, Oakland.

Some interesting facts:

The Cowboys have only lost to teams that were undefeated when they played. They've only beaten teams that were winless when they played.

The Giants beat (in this order, with records at the time of the game) Washington (0-0), Dallas (1-0), Tampa Bay (0-2), Kansas City (0-3), Oakland (1-3) and then today were pretty well dismantled by the unbeaten Saints. I'm not at all trying to say that Dallas is just about as good as the Giants because the Giants haven't played anyone. Read that sentence again. I'm just saying, I think that to an extent we've given the Giants a little bit too much credit.

I don't like how announcers and analysts use the phrase "come-from-behind victories" because it's ludicrous. I like the Vikings and I'm glad they hung on to beat Baltimore today (barely!), but that was NOT a come-from-behind victory. With something like 5:00 left in the game Minnesota led 30-17. With under 3:00 left Baltimore had taken the lead 31-30. At the two-minute warning Minnesota kicked a field goal to go ahead 33-31. The Ravens missed a last-second field goal and the Vikings won. How is that a come-from-behind victory? It looked more like a "gave-up-a-significant-lead-very-late-in-the-game-and-thanks-to-the-other-team-missing-a-field-goal-that-most-pro-kickers-make-they-lucked-out-a-win" victory. A few weeks back, I don't remember which game, a team scored a field goal on its first drive. The other team came back with a touchdown and went on to win handily. The announcers spoke of it as a come-from-behind victory. They came from behind by being down 3 points for 2:00 in the first five minutes of the game? That's ridiculous.

Some thoughts

I haven't posted since before I attended my first NFL game where the Cowboys were defeated by the Broncos. Regardless of how you might interpret that, let me assure you that the reason was not because I've been bummed out for a week and a half and couldn't bring myself to talk about the Cowboys. That's simply untrue. As big of a fan as I am of football, and as much as I like the Dallas Cowboys, their performance and results on the field do not actually impact my life that much. When I'm watching a game at home and they're playing poorly, sometimes I bang my fist (once) on the coffee table. When they lose a game I spend about 15 minutes being somewhat less happy than I usually am. Then everything's normal again. For some reason, I'm often treated by friends and coworkers as if I live and die with Cowboys victories and losses. I don't believe there is any evidence to support such ideas, but I welcome any feedback from anyone who thinks that my week is strongly influenced by how the Cowboys played on Sunday.

Moving on... I commented to a friend this week that I think winning a close game over the Chiefs and losing a close game to the Chiefs are about the same thing. There's no way a good team should be playing a close game with the Chiefs. Of course, that's not actually true, though, because the only stat in the NFL at the end of the day that really matters is who won the game. At the end of the season if Dallas is on the verge of making the playoffs, no one can say, "Well, but since the Chiefs game was so close and they almost got beat, we'll have to keep them out of the playoffs." If Tony Romo throws 5 interceptions in a game against the Raiders but Dallas wins, it means exactly the same thing for the team as it would if Tony Romo threw 5 touchdown passes and 430 yards. Obviously, there's still something to ANALYSIS, because when we consider how a team looked in a win we can better understand its strengths and weaknesses, and how good of a team it is and whether or not it has a legitimate shot to make the playoffs.

So, now we're on a bye week. I've probably got some other stuff coming. But that's all for now.

Hype vs. Truth

The Hype:

Denver has the best defense in the league. They lead the league in all kinds of defensive categories. Maybe the biggest one is that they've allowed only 16 points in three games. The next-best defense in that category has allowed more than TWICE as many: The Jets with 33. The Cowboys have relied too much on the run thus far. Today they've got Marion Barber trying to come back from an injury, Felix Jones out with an injury, and their only fully healthy back is #3 on the depth chart, Tashard Choice. The Cowboys will have to put the ball in Romo's hands more than they'd like, and we all know he's probably the worst quarterback in history when he's forced to play under pressure.

The Truth:

Two of the three teams Denver has played are ranked 31 and 32 in the league in offense (in case you're new, that's second-to-last, and last). The other team? Cincinnati. I'm not saying the Denver defense isn't any good -- they really are. But the "next closest team" that has allowed "more than twice as many points" is the Jets, and they have played Houston, New England, and Tennessee. I don't understand how the best rushing team in the league through three weeks (that would be the Cowboys) can be said to have relied "too much" on the run. For years people have been saying that the reason Dallas can't ever finish seasons strongly is because they don't have a good enough run game. That's just an idiotic statement, in my opinion. Marion Barber's coming back from an injury, true, but have you EVER seen Marion Barber run tentatively? This isn't Mary-Ann Barber, baker from Elm Street. It's Marion freakin' Barber, Bash-Attack. Tashard Choice is a starting back for half the teams in the league. The run game will be fine.

I think the game will be a good one, and a close one. Denver's Elvis Dumerville leads the league in sacks, and he's a very strong, quick player that the Cowboys will probably have a hard time containing. The point of this post is simply to point out that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to the Denver hype... yet.

P.S. I'll be at the game. I'LL BE AT THE GAME!!!!!!!!!