Oh, the hysteria this past week. There was screaming from the highest hilltops in these parts following the 17-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers:
Run the ball . . . the blankity-blank Cowboys have to run the ball more if they are going to win, with no regard to last week's first-place standing in the NFC East, their No. 4 offensive ranking in the NFL or their No. 8 standing running the ball in the NFL.
They must have better balance, came the cries.
They must unleash the three-headed monster.
The offensive coordinator is far to in love with the pass because he's a former quarterback.
Just run the darn ball.
Yeah, well here, let me present Cowboys 7, Redskins 6, before 85,277 head-shaking people at Cowboys Stadium, witnessing on Sunday the first time the Cowboys have won a regular-season game by scoring no more than seven points since Dec. 12, 1970, when they beat the Cleveland Browns 6-2, and any game whatsoever since pounding the Detroit Lions two weeks later that same season in an NFC Divisional Playoff game, 5-0.
That's it. In their now 50-year history, totaling 747 regular-season games, this is only the second time the esteemed Dallas Cowboys have won a game scoring no more than seven points.
Calling this a The Miracle On Randol Mill is not resorting to hyperbole.
But by golly, those Dallas Cowboys did what nearly everyone out there was screaming for - demanding of the supposed dead-head offensive coordinator:
They ran the football.
Ran the football 33 times overall, and 30 times during the first 10 of their 11 possessions. Ran it up the middle. Ran it wide. Ran delays. Just ran, ran, ran.
Gained 153 of them yards doing so in this game, too, so not bad.
And guess what?
They had produced a big nothing . . . zero points the first 52:54 of this NFL game.
And the Redskins, the erstwhile 3-6 Redskins were probably laughing. They lured the Cowboys into this running game, playing their safeties nearly in Fort Worth when the Cowboys were driving west and back in Dallas when they were going east. I exaggerate not, err, OK, maybe a tad, but you get the picture.
And the Deadskins, as so many perceived, were winning their bet - and the game, 6-0 - when the Cowboys took over first-and-10 at their own 40 with 7:06 left to play after kicker Shaun Suisham missed just his second field-goal attempt (50) of the season and in the game. To that point, the Cowboys had only thrown the ball 19 times, completing eight for a whopping 103 yards passing.
See, the Redskins decided if the Cowboys were going to score, over their dead safeties were they going to allow them to hit a big play. They made doubly sure everything was underneath, and they were gambling that the Cowboys would run out of downs or grow impatient nibbling underneath before their defense ran out of real estate to defend. It's the age-old philosophy of inferior teams.
Heck, they saw on tape the Cowboys convert only three of 12 third-down attempts the previous week against Green Bay. They saw one of those running monsters, Marion Barber, cough up the football on the Cowboys' ninth offensive play at the Washington 16-yard line. They saw Nick Folk miss a 46-yard field-goal attempt - his second miss in as many weeks - just two drives later and a desperation throw on fourth-down from the Washington 39 early in the fourth quarter end up in their arms.
Cat-eating grins, I'm telling you, the Redskins still leading 6-0 after all that.
As long as the Cowboys weren't running the ball into the end zone, as long as the Cowboys were gaining nothing longer than Barber's 17-yard run the second play of the fourth quarter, they were willing to let the Cowboys attempt to run the ball all they wanted, reminding of the starving man at an all-u-can-eat buffet who ends up not full in the end from too much of a good thing but sick.
The Redskins know - heck, the entire league knows - if that's all your opponent is running for, let them run all they want because they can't win. Remember the playoff loss to the Giants, the 2007 season when the Cowboys ran and ran Barber, only to look up at the end and the team which had averaged 28.4 points a game had only 17.
Don't you ever forget this. The days of Student Body Left have gone the way of the Pontiac. The days of three yards and a cloud of gold dust have gone the way of grass fields. That ain't Earl Campbell out there, you know.
Get with the program, dudes; those are "skinny jeans" out there, not bell-bottoms.
So finally, out of necessity, just as the final two possessions dictated last Sunday when the Cowboys threw the ball 25 times trying to erase a 17-0 Green Bay lead to leave their run-to-pass ratio out of whack in the end, the Cowboys resorted to throwing the ball, knowing they needed just 60 yards to grab a one-point lead. Forget all that running business.
One problem, though. They were playing with a lame quarterback. Tony Romo hurt his back that second possession of the game tackling DeAngelo Hall after Barber's fumble - maybe saving a touchdown.
He was not right. He could not step into his throws properly, thus they were sailing high, and not just to Roy Williams anymore.
"He'll be hurting tomorrow," Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips would say after the game, although claimed he was better on Monday. "Pretty amazing he was able to scramble for that first down."
Heck, he was hurting late Sunday afternoon, gingerly walking through a nearly cleared out locker room after undergoing some tests and into the interview room. Romo's take, ever the brave soldier, on his injury: If something is not broken, you keep playing.
But just know he was hurting so bad Romo could be seen tossing the football in the bench area when the mighty defense was on the field. Normally, Garrett and Romo sit at the end of the bench after each series going over the still pics. Well, to make sure his back didn't tighten up, they had to walk and talk.
Not exactly a recipe for success, right?
"He'll tell you he was a little hurt," Patrick Crayton said.
That's about all Romo would admit to, saying, "I took a little knee out there," and then a little shot after the game.
So with the quarterback walking worse than Festus after the game, the Cowboys had no other choice at that 7:06 mark than to put the ball game in his hands, for better for or worse, because those darn Redskins just were absorbing all that running the Cowboys threw at them and they were running out of time.
And as if the Red Sea began parting, Romo heated up in the nick of time.
Pass incomplete.
Pass to Felix Jones for 7.
Third-down scramble for 5 and that first down.
Pass to Witten for 7.
Pass to Austin for 9
Pass to Witten for 12
Pass to Austin for 11.
Pass to Austin for 4.
Pass to Crayton for 10 . . . touchdown . . . ball game.
While after throwing an incompletion on the first pass of that nine-play, 60-yard drive, Romo completed seven consecutive passes, and more than half to wide receivers when he had completed only one pass to a wide receiver prior to that point, and not until the final play of the third quarter at that.
You just can't win ball games throwing jab, jab, jab. Not in this league.
No wonder Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was saying afterward, "I have to pinch myself. I almost can't realize that only scoring seven points that we were able to beat that team and beat them the way that we beat them."
So the Cowboys won, and as Phillips rightfully should have said, "I'm not going to be mad we won."
But the last time the Cowboys scored no more than seven points in consecutive games - the last time they were shut out in the first halves of consecutive games - goes back to Games 14 and 15 of the 2002 season, a 5-11 season with Chad Hutchinson the starting quarterback at that point.
This my friends is a big problem, even though the Cowboys sit 7-3 and lead the NFC East by one game with the Oakland Raiders (3-7) up next here on Thanksgiving Day. By the grace of the higher being of your choice the Cowboys were able to split these back-to-back games scoring just seven points in each, ending a 21-game regular-season losing streak when scoring just seven points.
Why, they now have scored just three touchdowns in the past 11 quarters, and are actually averaging just 1.3 over the past three games. They have converted just eight of their last 28 third-down attempts stretching back into the second half of the victory in Philadelphia.
"This is also one of those kinds of games you can look at and know you have to get better because if we play that type of football week in and week out we won't be able to accomplish the goals we need or want," Romo said.
So let's just say the Cowboys are on notice. When the Raiders show up here on Thursday, they will import the Tampa Two to the Left Coast. Just play that two-deep zone, sort of a shell coverage with the cornerbacks muscling up at the line of scrimmage knowing help is always over the top - especially if the Cowboys continue to use tight ends, and mostly Witten, as security blankets for new starting right tackle Doug Free, taking them out of the pass patterns.
They will not care if the Cowboys rush for 153 yards, just as long as they aren't rushing into the end zone. They will force the Cowboys to prove they are efficient enough to march the ball, oh 75 yards in 12 plays, first down by first down, before they give them anything over the top.
The Cowboys are desperate for big plays, and not just passing. They need to run the ball for bigger chunks, considering their longest run during this latest three-game struggle (34 total points) is all of 17 yards.
And doubly desperate especially when the starting quarterback is hurt significantly enough to put backup Jon Kitna on alert this week.
"We were not good enough in situational football," Garrett said. "They forced us to drive the ball."
And they flunked their driver's test, as if some 16-year-old skidding around on sleet-stricken streets.
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Mickey Spagnola - 
