The Dallas Lesson All But Forgotten

Last year, the Dallas Cowboys, the fair-haired boys of the NFL since the dawn of Texas, came into the DMV ostensibly with something to play for but got caught in motivational limbo and ended up losing to a team the Media felt sure was going to take a sick day.

Seems like the Media is trying to pull another fast one. They are contending the Arizona Cardinals are going to take a sick season. Washington should pound the Red Birds into that 2024 season the Cardinals are deferring to.

Those same wonderboys, Dallas, came to D.C. once upon a time, having not won a ballgame, and defeated the much ballyhooed Washington Redskins. If memory serves, that was the ONLY ballgame the Hollywood Hendersons won that year.

There is an old saying in the NFL: Kill the motivational head and the performance will die.

In the annals of football, history is replete with games where teams that had no business winning games in fact do win them and sometimes win them going away.

The present RPO era is a great talent leveler. It's communist football. Equality is paramount. You focus on equalizers in game planning and play calling. You can pull a quarterback out of Food Lion and beat somebody with him. 

The Cardinals have better QBs than you can get in Food Lion. They can both run RPO and stick it in the end zone on you. Essentially, they will be the kid brother of the Philadelphia Eagles. This is the first Eagles game. You can bet the Eagles have a guy or guys watching this game. Anything the Red Birds do that embarrasses the Commanders, the Eagles are going to store on their Honey-Do List. So will everybody else but the Eagles, who we do take seriously, in particular.

That means there is a three loss in one disaster possible here.

Will that be enough to wake up the Commander Defense? 

Because the defenses under Ron Rivera seem to take quite some time to get ready. They become quite good after four or five games into the season. This is the first game of the year. It is not time yet for them. I see some on defense are already taking a mental health day against the Cardinals. If that has changed, let's see it, dadgummit.

The trend in Media is if Washington loses this game it will be because E.B., Sam Howell, and the offense lost it. The opposite is the case. The Ego of this Washington Commander defense has been inflated the whole preseason. People expect them to be as good now as when they beat the brain-eaten Dallas Zombies the last game of last season.

No. This is a slow-starting weedeater. It usually starts when there is six foot worth of snow on the ground.

The Offense will have to carry the team the first five games. If they execute, and I think they will, they can win a few if not all of them. 

Whether it be lack of mental sharpness or the faster tempo they will be playing, the Defense will have problems early. They aren't used to coming back in after two-minute offensive touchdowns. They are going to be gassed. And it doesn't look like they will have the depth they need to keep from collapsing at the end of the 400 meter dash.

The Offense is ready. The Defense isn't. 

I guess that is better than last year when neither was ready.