There’s no doubt the Dallas Cowboys remain America’s Team. That is, the Cowboys are still the most popular outfit in the NFL, or one of them anyway – at least if t-shirt sales and weekly coast-to-coast TV broadcasts are any indication.
But America’s Teams means something quite a bit different than it did decades ago.
America’s Team once stood for everything that was big, brash, bold, sexy and successful about America in general and Texas in particular. Everything about the organization sparkled, glistened and popped. Above all, the Cowboys won football games and contended for titles. America loves a winner. And year after year, America's Team was in the hunt at the end of the season.
But America’s Team has lost luster in every sense of the word. The organization no longer sparkles, glistens and pops. Instead, it seems to stumble, simmer and wilt. America's Team today seems to better reflect the general national malaise of lowered standards, reduced expectations and crisis of confidence.
America no longer leads the world into space; and star-studded Space Age America’s Team of the 1960s and 1970s no longer leads the NFL into the playoff race.
The Cowboys have not won a championship in 16 years, the longest drought in franchise history. It’s unlikely that trend will change this year. The Cowboys have wrangled up just two postseason wins since that last Super Bowl victory lap in January 1996. In fact, Dallas has yet to advance beyond the divisional round and compete for even a conference title during this period.
It’s a far cry from the glory days: at a time when America was putting men on the moon and sending them back and forth into orbit on the Space Shuttle, America’s Team was battling for NFL/NFC titles an incredible 12 times in the 17 seasons from 1966 to 1982. America’s once-glorious Cowboys were a fixture in the postseason, much like America’s once-glorious NASA was a fixture in the final frontier.
Some argue that we no longer expect great things from America. That belief may or may not be true. One thing that is true: we certainly no longer expect great things from America’s Team. Instead, fans and foes alike have come to expect failure on the football field.
Week 14 was a perfect microcosm of these diminished expectations and diminished performances. America’s Team committed one ugly gaffe after another Sunday night on their way to joining the ignominious list of Cold, Hard Football Facts Epic Failures for 2011.
Epic Fail: America’s Team vs. the N.Y. Giants
The 2011 season already had the bitter flavor of unrealized expectations heading into the Cowboys primetime showdown at home Sunday against the division-rival Giants.
Dallas clung to the division lead with a 7-5 record, but there were already too many lost opportunities to feel good about the space race into the postseason.
The Cowboys coughed up a 27-3 third-quarter lead to the Detroit Lions back in Week 4, and lost 34-30. Motown’s Team, a historically dreadful outfit, scored 17 unanswered points in the final frame to win the game.
The Cowboys, in their very next contest, had a chance to knock off the mighty New England Patriots in Foxboro. Dallas stifled Tom Brady and the prolific New England offense for much of the day and held a 16-13 lead late in the fourth quarter. But Brady drove the Patriots 80 yards in the final 2 minutes, and connected with Aaron Hernandez for an 8-yard game-winning TD with 22 seconds to play.
(Perhaps it’s a symbolic sign of hope that America’s Team has been supplanted over the past decade by America’s Patriots, an organization that propelled itself into the national limelight in the dark days after 9/11. The Cowboys won the first seven meetings between those two franchises from the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 through 1996, the end of the organization’s last period of glory. The Patriots have won all four meetings since then.)
Dallas visited Philadelphia in Week 8 with a chance to pile on the struggling Eagles. Instead, the Cowboys simply failed to show up for a huge divisional tussle. They lost, 34-7.
Then last week, there was the infamous “icing your own kicker” incident against the Arizona Cardinals. Cowboys kicker Dan Bailey nailed a 49-yard field goal to win the game at the end of the regulation – or so it seemed. Cowboys coach Jason Garrett had called a timeout just before the boot.
America’s Team lined up again but this time Bailey didn’t have enough leg under the ball. The game went to overtime, where Cardinals running back LaRod Stephens-Howling took a short pass and rumbled 52 yards for a score through and around what seemed like the entire Dallas defense. The Cardinals won, 19-13.
We’re fairly certain that stoic Tom Landry, the man who helped save the world when he flew bombing missions over Nazi Germany before building America’s Team, never iced his own kicker.
But those losses were just a prelude to Week 14.
The Giants-Cowboys battle Sunday night joins the Cold, Hard Football Facts list of epic failures for 2011, especially in light of the stakes, the opponent, the venue, the opportunity lost and the excruciating way in which it unfolded.
The Cowboys merely need a win at home against the 6-6 Giants to stake out a two-game lead in the "Glamour Division" NFC East with just three games to play.
Dallas quarterback Tony Romo hit Dez Bryant for a 50-yard scoring strike and America’s Team held a commanding 34-22 advantage with less than 6 minutes to play. (No offense intended to the very lovely Mrs. Tony Romo, Candice Crawford, but perhaps it was symbolic of the decline America’s Team when its quarterback married Miss Missouri instead of Miss America. Just sayin’.)
But the game was far from over after the long Dallas scoring strike. The most Epic Failure of the season was about to unfold right before the sleepy late-night eyes of America.
Giants QB Eli Manning led an 80-yard TD drive that brought the Giants to within 34-29 with just over 3 minutes to play.
No problem. America’s Team, which had gashed the Giants on the ground all night, merely needed to run off a couple first downs and chew up the clock. And even if they didn’t, even if America’s Team punted away, the Giants still needed to drive the length of the field.
Oops.
The Cowboys offense went three and out and ran less than a minute off the clock; Cowboys punter Mat McBriar pooched the ball 33 yards, short by high school standards, let alone the standards of America's Team; and then the Cowboys defense, the allegedly talented unit that never seems to make big stops, promptly allowed the Giants to march 58 yards into the end zone for the game-winning score.
This Epic Failure gets even worse.
Dallas took over at its own 20 with 46 seconds to play. As quick as you could say “Clint Longley to Drew Pearson,” Romo had moved the Cowboys to the Giants 29 yard line. America’s Team was going to take the game overtime!
Or not.
Giants defensive lineman Jason Pierre-Paul blocked Bailey’s kick. That’s right. A guy with a French name provided the final coup de grace against America’s Team Sunday night. Perhaps it’s only another coincidence that the foiled kicker’s name is so All-American that he sounds like belongs behind the counter of the local building & loan in a tiny town like Bedford Falls.
When Good Ol’ Dandy Don Meredith and Captain America Roger Staubach were carving out the legacy of America’s Team, these were the types of games that that the Dallas Cowboys won. Or, at the very least, we expected America’s Team to win.
These days, we no longer expect the Cowboys to come through in the clutch. After yet another Epic Fail, it’s safe to say that America faces a crisis of confidence in America’s Team.
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