The Dallas Cowboys have now lost five games in a row, but not having Tony Romo until at least November 22 isn’t stopping the team’s management and coaching staff from believing that there’s still a chance of making the playoffs.
The Cowboys are in the NFC East, with the New York Giants at 4-4 leading the way, which makes things reparable. Facing the Philadelphia Eagles in week 9 might be their big chance of putting this season still in some kind of hopeful form, because falling to 2-6, regardless of Romo coming back and the weak opponents, means the Cowboys are out of the picture.
The problem for the Cowboys has been putting points on the board, averaging just 19 so far this season. They have just six passing touchdowns, three of them by Romo, who hasn’t played since week 2. The Brandon Weeden and Matt Cassel quarterback corporation hasn’t produced anything to be proud of, although the Cowboys have given up on Weeden and aren’t planning on going nuts and giving Kellen Moore the opportunity. It’s Cassel’s job.
Except for their 30-6 loss to the Patriots, the Cowboys have been in every game. They lost to the Giants by 7 points and to the Seahawks this week by one point. The defense is doing well, with Greg Hardy, despite the unhappiness from pretty much everyone outside the organization about him playing, is making things very difficult for opponents along with a strong front seven. The secondary hasn’t got anything to brag about, but if the Cowboys weren’t struggling so much to get into the end zone, we wouldn’t be hearing about the mistakes by defensive backs so much.
Romo has started practicing, but very very slowly, and it’s going to be a while before he’s ready to actually play and take hits. We saw how poorly Ben Roethlisberger performed coming back from his injury this weekend, which means it’s not going to be smooth sailing coming off the broken collarbone. But Dez Bryant is going to be better after one week of shrugging off rust against Richard Sherman. All that’s needed now is for Cassel to try and remember what it’s like to make some big plays with his arm. The Cowboys have plenty of pieces around him; it shouldn’t be this difficult.