e-mail   murphy@murphymartin.com

Murphy Martin Commentary
January 17, 2007

"Cowboys Lose - Reporters Rant"

The Dallas Cowboys great season came to a crashing halt Sunday as the New York Giants gained the right to continue in the hunt for the Super Bowl. Final score at Texas Stadium was Giants 21, Cowboys 17.

While Jacque Taylor of the Dallas Morning News called for Phillips to be replaced as head coach and Randy Galloway spent the afternoon, on ESPN Radio, calling Phillips "Doofus" (Randy,you are a better journalist than this!) and spewing all manner of vicious questioning of Cowboys lack of perfection on Sunday, Wade Phillips expressed the feelings of many Cowboy fans when he said..."the best team did not win"...on Sunday.

A close look at the game statistics support Coach Phillips' thinking. Dallas has the ball for slightly more than 36-minutes, New York just over 23-minutes. The Cowboys led in First downs 23 to 16; In total yardage gained 336 to 230; Dallas ran 71-Offensive plays to 44 for the Giants. Marion Barber gained 101-yards rushing in the first half alone, the Giants got only 90-yards rushing for the whole game. Tony Romo threw for 201-yards despite Anthony Fasano failing to catch a ball that hit him in the chest in the end zone and Patrick Crayton dropping two and failing to run out a pattern that looked like another sure touchdown. Eli Manning got 12 of 18 for 163-yards and 52 of those yards came on the Giants first touchdown throw to Amani Toomer who ran through what looked like only a short yardage gain until Roy Williams fell down as he reached for Toomer.

Dallas also led in an unwanted category--PENALTIES! The Giants were flagged only three times for a total of 25-yards while Dallas was flagged 11-times for 84-yards including three false starts on Flozell Adams and one rather questionable intentional grounding on Romo. Jacques Reeves kept a Giant scoring drive alive with a 15-yard face-mask grab and twist.

In the seventeenth game of the season it seems an offensive lineman would know to keep an eye on the ball until the center starts the snap just as you would expect a man who has been penalized over and over, fined repeatedly and even suspended for a game to know he needs to "wrap-up" the runner and forget the "horse-collar" grabs that are so expensive and hurt team efforts at crucial times.

We also wonder how many of these fans and the would-be "know-it-all" sports reporter coaches thought the Cowboys would win ten-games this season? What were they saying when Dallas was10-and-1 and undefeated on the road? Wade Phillips was coaching then too! What were they saying after the Cowboys methodically removed the Packers as the leader of the NFC? Phillips was coaching then too.

Granted, that Packer game seemed to see the Cowboys peak and they never quite matched their performance in the Green Bay game that brought talk of the Cowboys playing in the Super Bowl to a crescendo! The 'Boys won two games in December, finished at 13-3 and the same sports reporter-coaches were busy talking more about a sixty-million-dollar quarterback's trip to Mexico on his three-day free weekend, than they were about his coach.

For what it is worth, the man who suffered most from Sunday's loss to the Giants, Jerry Jones, he is the boss and he says Wade Phillips is still his coach. And Phillips should be. The Dallas Cowboys are once again a team to be reckoned with. America's Team is almost back.

How many other teams won thirteen of their regular season games this year?

And we wonder how much better Dallas would have played had some of these reporter-coaches had something good to say about the Cowboys instead of questioning a pop-star's effect on Tony Romo? Or, other negative thoughts such as Phillips failure in playoff games? Or, how Bill Parcells would handle this or that? Or, how many coaches Parcells will take from the Cowboys?

The loss to the Giants did hurt. The Cowboys are a better team than they showed Sunday. And, we imagine there are days reporter-coaches write better stories than other days. And would-be Howard Cosell broadcasters will fall way short of Cosell's work....but they will keep trying with ranting controversy and calling someone "Doofus". And don't be surprised when Wade Phillips keeps on coaching ....and winning!

That's my time, thank you for yours!


Murphy Martin

Your thoughts and comments forwarded to my website will be appreciated.

e-mail   murphy@murphymartin.com

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