A deal is a deal.

Unfortunately for me there is no feux impressed banter necessary coming from this Redskins fan. On Sunday night a good team played against a very bad one, and the results were ugly. Washington played like a team completely lacking urgency from the top down.

But this diary is not about the Washington Redskins, but the Dallas Cowboys who rightfully deserved my humbled praise for a preformance that partially explains why the Dallas Cowboys have beaten the Redskins 20 someodd times more than the Redskins have beaten the Cowboys.

As the deficit grew and the time ticked away, it became inceasingly clear to this fan (I was at Texas Stadium) that there would be no Saint Moss to save the day, as Grizz prophetically predicted last week.

While I joined the media in our hopeful hand wringing at the apparently-not-so-predictable T.O. meltdown, the Cowboys went out and destroyed the Redskins largely without him. Even if "that player" ever gets around to realizing who he is, it isn't at all clear that it will help us one bit, since our team was so ineffectual.

And the Cowboys impressively outplayed both the 11 players in Redskins jerseys and officiating staff which called questionable calls against the Boys a few times. Despite their best efforts at keeping the game close, the refs couldn't prevent the inevitable blow out that occurs when one team just straight outplays another. Penalties? Dropped passes? The Cowboys did enough things right to get the W. What else matters?

This Redskins fan expresses genuine concern that last year's sweep against the Cowboys was nothing more than an inevitable statistical hiccup in an otherwise one sided era of Cowboys>Redskins domination. While we yearned so much for that horrible era to end, it seems to have reared its ugly head again. And how long will this drought last? 7 years? 8?

Bless their hearts, the media has repeatedly referred to the Redskins - Cowboys games as a "rivalry". But that doesn't really describe the virtually uninterrupted annual shellacking the Cowboys have laid on the Redskins, and it certainly doesn't describe last night's utter disaster. For a rivalry to exist, some team needs another to lose to, and the Redskins have not lived up to their end of that bargain.

So my hat is off to you, Cowboys fans. Congratulations on a decisive victory over a hated opponent (notice I don't think rival is an appropriate word to use here). It must feel effing wonderful.

All apologies for the dismal preformance of the Redskins, though do not take that as a strike against the Cowboys playing whatsoever. Dallas deserves all the credit for outplaying an opponent on its way to victory. Perhaps on November 5th the Redskins can redeem themselves, though I'm less confident of that now then I was a few days ago.

Congratulations.