Week 8 recap: We’ll always have the Cowboys

via AP Images

Entering Monday night’s game against the Dallas Cowboys, Washington was struggling against an unrelenting current headed rather rapidly towards yet another year of franchise disembowelment. Gruden had benched second-stringer and former franchise-quarterback-of-the-week Kirk Cousins, for third-string man-child, Texas native and Cleveland Browns reject, Colt McCoy. Riddled with injuries and plagued with the typical early season dysfunction, Washington looked destined for another sub .500 season. Dallas was merely an annoying layover along the way.

McCoy was perhaps Washington’s only storyline with any teeth: The prodigal son returns home. But even those were gnarled and unsightly, and the networks understandably opted to focus on the pearly whites of the Cowboys, allowing their pregame pundits to blather excitedly and emphatically about the powerhouse that Dallas had become, and in doing so, coyly nod their heads toward the putrid stench of failure wafting from the D.C. area. On Sunday, the CBS crew actually laughed out loud at the prospect of a Washington win. The pregame picks lit up with blue stars across the board. Before kickoff, Mike Tirico narrated the vaunted franchise history as elaborate graphics played out on the screen. Tony Romo. Dez Bryant. DeMarco Murray. Fucking “America’s Team.”

But there is a strange aura around the Washington/Dallas rivalry in which logic doesn’t seem to even play a supporting role. I cringe to even write those words, but I’m at a loss to explain these game rationally. There’s a genuine feeling that regardless of record or momentum or personnel, anything can happen between these two teams. One of the best memories I have–isolated from the garbage stew that has represented the majority of the last two decades–is the Monday Night Miracle in 2005, when Mark Brunell threw two bombs to Santana Moss in the final minutes, to silence the Cowboys 14-13.

Maybe it’s because of that game, and a handful of other Dallas games, that makes these meetings feel like the constraints of records and statistics no longer apply. On paper, this game was ripe for disaster. Even the most willfully irrational Washington fan could see the writing on the wall. Colt McCoy? C’mon. But the tantalizing, ever-so-slim prospect of knocking the endlessly hateable Cowboys down a peg was too enticing to ignore. It gave the game new meaning; a sliver of hope. 

The morning headlines globbed on to McCoy; the hometown boy made good. The Texas gunslinger with the boyish face and the southern drawl, who looked like he was going to vomit on Lisa Salters during the pregame interview, was surprisingly poised in the pocket and avoided costly errors. Throughout the first four quarters, he didn’t try and do more than he had to, and in OT, when he had to, he did a hell of a lot more than we expected he would.

“I felt like in the second half, I just screwed my cleats in and went out there and played ball,” he said after the game in the most Colt-y McCoy-y thing I’ve ever heard.

But the real story was the defense that seemed to disregard the previous seven weeks, screw in their cleats next to McCoy, and just blitz the ever-loving shit out of Romo, until the tenuous threads of his patchworked spine burst at the seams. Jim Haslett has taken his fair share of criticism over the last several years, and this game hardly absolves him of that, but on Monday night he put together a game plan that worked nearly to perfection. Over and over, Washington brought the house with reckless abandon, forcing Romo into a panicked scramble, and usually into the oncoming defenders open arms. And when they didn’t bring the house, they faked like they were, mercilessly toying with Romo’s reads. The sack that momentarily drove him from the game, looked relatively harmless in the replays, but his body language said otherwise. The way he crouched in the fetal position to absorb the hit of the oncoming rusher, and then lay prone on the field, presumably rewatching his demise on the largest HD screen known to man, screamed, “Please… enough….”

The ESPN top brass probably didn’t envision a Weeden v. McCoy, ex-Browns rodeo when they slotted this game for Monday night, but the two college standouts didn’t disappoint. If there is an identifiable weakness in the Washington’s defense during the entire game, it wasn’t anything Romo did, but Weeden’s 80-yard game-tying touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, capped off by a pass to Jason Witten who was left without a Washington defender within a 10 yard radius.

Meanwhile, Jerry Jones crawled down from his owner’s box and prowled the sidelines, commandeering the Romo injury situation, and generally playing doctor without a verified medical license. At one point the cameras caught Jones conferring with Jason Garrett during the game, informing him that Romo was adequately medicated on pain killers ready to return to action. To reiterate: Jones, not the team doctor, was advising Garrett. (Side note: I loath Dan Snyder with more energy than is probably psychologically advisable, but even Snyder–as despicable as he is–wouldn’t pull the stunt that Jerry did last night.) The ripple effects of this insanity is far reaching, but the exact words Jones used–“I told Jason that he would be back”–suggests the kind of ownership meddling that will inevitably burn this organization to the ground, much to the delight of any NFL fan with a soul.

But when Romo did return, with two minutes left in the game, it seemed to be part of a plot twist that was all too visible. The Cowboys will win this, I thought. The defense will cave and Romo will hobble off the field to the adulation of Cowboy fans. The analysts would lose control of their cognitive functioning and drool helplessly down the front of their silk ties, while blubbering endlessly about Romo’s toughness and leadership. Washington would remain the laughable, pathetic punchline. (Don’t worry though, Washington’s in-house sack of human waste/PR-flack Tony Wiley would take care of that all by himself by angrily ushering McCoy away from a post-game interview with ESPN Deportes with a petulant “No means no!” over his shoulder. To be fair, Wiley hasn’t experienced too many game-winning situations, so his gut reaction is probably to lash out defensively at the media and protect the winning QB from those hard-hitting post-game questions.)

Those fears only intensified when, on the second play, Brandon Meriweather came flying through the pocket to strip Romo, and the ball squirted through the torso of Ryan Kerrigan, who seemed equally baffled at the impossible trajectory the ball took when he landed directly on top of it.

Then something weird happened. The defense didn’t cave. McCoy didn’t throw an excruciating interception in OT. The team behaved as though there was something on the line with this game. Meanwhile, Haz just kept bringing the blitz, seven or eight guys at a time, trusting the young corners, Breeland and Amerson, to do what they had done all game and shut down the Cowboys’ top two receivers. Romo would not be the hero, and Washington, for once, would not be the goat.

Monday night games against the Cowboys are why I watch this team, even when the season appears to be trapped in a slow spiral down the soiled end of the toilet. Washington is 3-5, with match-ups against he hapless Vikings and Bucs sandwiching a bye. It appears RGIII is slated for a triumphant return.

Suddenly .500 doesn’t look so far off. We’ve grasped that sliver of hope and we’re beginning to forcefully pry it back open.