Well, it's the morning after and it still looks the same. The Cowboys are a good team, a team that eventually could become a great team, but we are not the Patriots. We are just not on that level yet. I’m not sure anybody is at this point, maybe the Colts, we’ll see down the line.
Here’s what the players and coaches said after the game.
One of the most frustrating aspects of that game was the Cowboys inability to get off the field on 3rd down. Time after time, Brady made a mockery of our 3rd down defense.
"First and second down, I think we did a real good job," linebacker DeMarcus Ware said. "We'd get them to third and 10, third and 11, third and eight or nine, and they just seemed to mess with us."
[snip]
"We tried about everything we could do, almost every coverage and blitz," coach Wade Phillips said. "They just seemed to have the right answer for everything, and that's certainly the quarterback. He does a great job distributing the ball to a lot of different people."
Brady is a cold-blooded killer. We had no answer for him and his trio of ringers at WR.
The secondary in particular paid the price for Brady’s excellence.
"They did a good job of executing their plays," Cowboys safety Ken Hamlin said. "I don't think it was a breakdown; they just executed better than we did. They went to all their receivers. We have to play better."
Even when we thought we had them covered, we didn’t.
"We got Welker covered and [Stallworth] catches a 60-yard touchdown pass on us," Phillips said. "We doubled him some; in fact we doubled him on the touchdown pass he caught. It's frustrating."
Make no mistake about it, the Patriots were simply the better team. And the Cowboys know it.
"Some of these guys might be a little frustrated now and say 'We might be better than those guys'" [Bradie] James said. "No, we aren't better. If we had been better, we would have won."
Wade Phillips isn't buying any excuses, either.
"There are no excuses," said coach Wade Phillips, his team 5-1, tied with Green Bay for the best record in the NFC. "They outplayed us."
Count Romo among the group who knew we lost to a better team.
"You're disappointed, you're frustrated, but we weren't the best team on the field," Romo said. "As a competitive guy and a competitive team, that's hard for us this evening and will be for the next day or so. I said this a while ago, it's not going to go smooth every game, but we're 5-1 and that's a good place to be right now."
And about that call for the FG instead of going for the TD in the 4th quarter, Phillips sounds a little wishy-washy on that now.
"With 10 minutes left, I thought it was the right call," Phillips said. "Looking back now, I would say, 'Go for it.' If you're going to get beat, 48-27, you might as well go for it."
At least the Original 81 has the right attitude about the game.
"Hopefully, we'll see them down the road," receiver Terrell Owens said. "We've just got to regroup. There's no confidence lost in the locker room."
Romo suffered an injury that will be re-evaluated today, but Romo doesn’t think it will be anything serious.
Romo suffered a left shoulder strain, and although he finished the game, he did have the shoulder wrapped, with his arm inside his shirt, close to his left side.
While Romo said he had suffered a rotator-cuff strain, Cowboys assistant trainer Britt Brown said it would more appropriate to call the injury a "shoulder strain."
When Romo was asked if he thought he'd be able to play in next Sunday's game against the Minnesota Vikings, here at Texas Stadium, Romo said little, only giving a facial expression as if to imply, "Are you kidding? Me miss a game?"
John Clayton slurps the Patriots in this article, and deservedly so.
Don Banks does the same, here.
You can read a semi-update about Terry Glenn's eventual return, here. Bottom line, nobody has any idea when he might return.