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
