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| The Cowboys rushed for 153 yards against the Redskins. |
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ARLINGTON, Texas - OK, run this.
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 |
Mickey Spagnola - 
