It’s easy to look at Sunday’s boxscore and laugh when you see the Dallas Cowboys, 18-point favorites at home, needed a last-second score off a 98-yard drive to beat the lowly Houston Texans. It’s even more comical when you learn the Texans should have won the game; referees appeared to rule incorrectly that Houston’s Chris Moore was down short of the goal line in the waning minutes.
“We got to love these moments,” Haughton product and Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said about Sunday’s late-game heroics that ended an otherwise puzzling performance. “Who cares what’s happened the first 58 minutes of this game? We’ve got two minutes to go get a win.”
Many fans will parlay the apparent gift from the officials and Philadelphia’s destruction of the New York Giants into believing the Eagles would also wipe the floor with the Cowboys. (The Twitterverse masterfully deletes the Cowboys’ astonishing 33-point fourth quarter against Indianapolis in Week 13 from our brains.)
The Cowboys’ trip to planet Polar Opposite over the past eight days isn’t necessarily a predictor of what’s to come – it’s just a perfect example of why the NFL is the most compelling sport in the land.
The NFL’s structure encourages chaos on a weekly basis. The worst teams get an implied advantage in the next season’s schedule and the first opportunities to select the best players in the NFL Draft. More often than not, one or both of the teams that battle in the Super Bowl struggle to make the playoffs the next season.
If your team stinks, just give it a year or two. There is a good chance hope isn’t far around the corner.
The discrepancy in the 32 rosters is slimmer than most think. There are just four weeks left in the season, but if you think you know what’s going to happen in the postseason, you’re probably wrong.
Heck, the 4-8 New Orleans Saints still have a chance to win the South Division. They are a train wreck and, last week, they posted one of the most embarrassing meltdowns in recent memory in a primetime game. But they’re still in it.
That’s nuts.
Any team. Any week. It’s not cliché, but reality in the NFL.
The Cowboys are tied for the second-best record in the league – the same record as AFC juggernauts Buffalo and Kansas City and not-so-NFC-juggernaut Minnesota.
The Vikings are 10-3 and own a minus-1 point differential. This is not a misprint. Minnesota is seven games over .500 and has been outscored for the season. When the Vikings find themselves as home underdogs in the first round of the playoffs, you’ll know why.
The NFL is wacky, but magically addictive, folks. And we haven’t even sniffed January. The Super Bowl is still two months away, and the playoff field is starting to take shape. Who’s going to be the last team standing? Who the heck knows. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Contact Roy at roylangiii@yahoo.com