I wrote this and I figured I would post here to see if yall agree/disagree and get your thoughts. This loss was just soul crushing and probably the most down I've ever been after a loss. I must be a masochist for wanting to go back and go over all the little things that went wrong. My focus is mostly on the 2nd half and what happened offensively.

Most times after a loss you can go back and point at one thing and say, yep, thats what did us in. After a loss like yesterday's, I'm so shell shocked because it was myriad of breakdowns whether it was a component of the team that didn't play well or a singular plays that you want to point out that greatly affected the outcome. Immediately after the game I was stunned. I couldn't put my finger on it. How exactly did we lose a game where late in the 3rd quarter I still felt extremely confident without a doubt in my mind that they would be fine? Then I thought about it. It was a laundry list of items that if one play went differently or one team unit played differently then maybe we'd be looking at an NFC championship game in Dallas next week. Thats what makes this one so tough to swallow. It took so much to go wrong for us to lose by 4 points. Those are always the toughest games to take.

You can say well this team just went into cruise control through December and you can't flip on the switch. I don't buy into that stuff. A wise ex-coach of this team once said "you are what are". I think this teams performance through the last month was more indicative of a regression to the mean, a team showing its true colors. The Cowboys aren't as good as they looked through the first part of the season, nor are they as bad as they looked through the last 5 games, Giants game included. It wasn't about turning off any switch and then fumbling to find that switch later on. Thats all BS to me.

Whereas the defense completely failed this team last year down the stretch, the high flying offense let the Cowboys down this time around. This doesn't absolve the defense of anything, because they certainly had their issues yesterday and have issues that need to be addressed in the off-season. Things like how can we get rid of Roy Williams, is Jacques Reeves really the best we can do at the nickel corner, and why isn't our front 7 capable of imposing their will on another team in terms of a suffocating pass rush (ala the Giants in the 2nd half) like we had hoped? However, lets be honest, this team is about its offense and when you average 15.4 points through your last 5 games, there will be problems. If you want to take out the Skins game, 17.75 ppg. Still unacceptable. Jason Garrett is clearly a rising star but his play calling in the latter part of the year needs to brought into question. Selfishly and truthfully, I'm not sure he's ready to be an NFL head coach.

I'm not an X's and O's expert but I don't believe Garrett managed the game effectively in the 2nd half. With the Giants secondary literally counting on practice squad players, we never took advantage. Credit the Giants for recognizing their problem and saying F it, we're coming after you and hopefully you can't get the ball away. Garrett and the Cowboys never made them pay for that. I assume the lack of throws to TO meant he was being doubled. The Giants manned up/doubled the crucial receivers, the D-line pinned their ears back, and said find a way to beat us. No other receivers stepped up and made plays. There are ways to thwart a blitz and there are ways to get your receivers in single coverage situations and the Cowboys didn't do it.

However, having said all that, two other things really killed the Cowboys offensively which limited Garrett's options and never allowed the offense to get into a rhythm offensively. Pass protection and mental mistakes. These two items put the Cowboys in poor down and distance situations. A good offense is all about getting yourself into manageable down and distances. If you don't, it makes it easy on the opposing defense. The Cowboys D deserves its share of the blame, especially for the 50 second drive at the end of the 1st half which changed the complexion of the game. However, the D gave the offense opportunities to extend or take lead in the 2nd half and it never happened because the offense put themselves in a bad situation on every one of its 2nd half drives.

I'll address the mental mistakes first. The dropped passes, the false starts, the personal foul on Davis, the intentional grounding that never should have been flagged but could have been avoided, and taking sacks when you really shouldn't have. All things poised and prepared teams do not do. The two biggest drops that stand out to me: Crayton's drop on 3rd and long, and Fasano's paddle hands in the endzone on our first drive in the 2nd half. If Fasano catches that ball then the Cowboys are up a TD early in the 2nd half. He didn't, then the Cowboys false started (mental mistake), Romo flutters a pass behind TO and we kick a FG. The defense holds with the help of a big sack from Ware and the offense has a chance to take a 10 point lead and force Eli to make plays. As a side note, I'm really annoyed at all this talk about how Eli has turned the corner and how hes made it now. Give him props for managing the game and driving the bus but if all you're asking for is Trent Dilfer thats awfully low expectations for a number 1 pick. He was never forced to make plays but thats the Cowboys fault. Back to the 2nd drive. Leonard's penalty puts the Cowboys at 2nd and 18. Romo finds Crayton streaking across the middle for a 1st down and then some if you consider the YAC... but he drops it. Who knows what would have been the end result of that drive but that drop prevented the Cowboys from taking control of that game. That play was with 1:18 left in the 3rd quarter. Before that I was still extremely confident. After that, fear started to creep in that we were letting them hang around. The Giants scored on their ensuing drive and then I'm flat out scared. Our next drive we moved into Giants territory but it was stamped out by Romo taking an ill advised sack when he could have and should have gotten the ball away. I don't have many qualms with how Romo played yesterday besides the two sacks that he took. Beyond that, he wasn't really given a chance by his O-line's shoddy pass protection. This leads to the other downfall of the Cowboy's yesterday.

The O-line has been brought into question this year over their run blocking but the pass blocking has been stellar for the most part. My theory for what happened yesterday was a lack of conditioning. We moved down the field in the 1st half with some epicly long drives. Commonly accepted notion would be that the effects of this would really wear on the Giants D in the 2nd half. What seemed to happen instead was that the O-line looked slow coming out of their stances and too gassed to effectively move around and protect Romo in the 2nd half. Perhaps if the Cowboys had the opportunity to pound the ball more in the 2nd half then we could have really worn on the Giants D. However, as mentioned before, our down and distance situations dictated otherwise. Its debatable though because MBIII actually looked tired in the 2nd half as well. Romo was under duress in all of the Cowboys last 3 drives. Two times he had TO and Austin deep but wasn't able to get enough on it because of a defender in his face. The false starts coupled with incompletions due to pressure repeatedly put the Cowboys in 3rd and long. The pass protection was so bad that Witten was forced to stay in on several occasions to help on rush pickup, including the Cowboys last offensive play.

Back to Garrett's playcalling one last time. The decision to run the ball on 2nd and 1 on the last drive ended up being fatal for the Cowboys. I suppose the rationale was to surprise them a bit with a draw, take advantage of the Giants aggressiveness, maybe pick up 10 yards, then spike the ball. What ended up happening was there seemed to be some space for him to run, but a tired Barber got arm tackled, ran into his lineman, lost the ball after hitting the ground, a bit of a scrum ensued... and the clock kept ticking. Even if he picked up a nice chunk of yards, the end result of the play was almost inevitably the clock still running. The Cowboys started on the 48 with 1 TO and 1:50 left, an extremely manageable situation. The Cowboys managed to run only 3 plays in the next 1:19. The Giants managed to accomplish much more in 50 seconds to end the 1st half. Suddenly, :31 left, no timeouts and on the 22 yard line. A false start, a receiver quitting on his route, and a desperation heave into the endzone later, that was all she wrote. Theres a lot to look forward to with this team and we're definitely trending up, but this one sucked... more than any other Cowboys game I've ever watched.