Not for a Super Bowl.
Not really beyond 9-7 and just OK.
Certainly not nationally.
Just look at NFL power rankings going into 2009, and almost every newspaper/.com/blog/fanboy page has a 1-32 list of NFL teams. Most have the Cowboys wedged somewhere between 13 and 19, with No. 19 being a fairly popular landing spot.
The rankings seem to say what nobody in these parts is willing to, namely: Until they prove otherwise, this is a middling NFL team.
This seems to chap some people, most notably the head coach of the Cowboys, who likes to argue 13-3 and bye-week wins and the promise of big talent and pretty stats. But the reality is the Cowboys have not won a playoff game since 1996 and thus rightfully have earned the rep as an underachieving circus. They are good drama. They are not so good in December and beyond.
This is why they are not longer the chic pick to win the Super Bowl. They have yet to prove they are deserving of the expectations. They have yet to prove they can live up to what they say is their goal.
And the way I figure it, these five things need to happen for the Cowboys to jump from middling team to actual real contender this season.
1. Coach Cupcake has to be a better defensive coordinator than he has been a head coach.
Everybody banking on Wade Phillips’ actually becoming “more whatever” like he promised needs to get real. Coaches rarely change demeanor, certainly not at Coach Wade’s age. He is not a leader, and so expecting him to be so is silly.
What he has been at every NFL stop is one heck of a defensive coordinator. And this needs to be his biggest contribution to this Cowboys team this season. He needs to turn them into not just stat hounds they have been but the catalytic defense they need. The best gauge of this is not how they rank against the run or how many sacks they have versus a year ago, although both help. The best gauge is whether or not the Cowboys win.
2. Forget his private life, Romo has to clean up his game.
A lot of time and column inches have been devoted to Cowboys QB Tony Romo and what he likes to do in his off time. I guess it is fair to argue this has created a perception problem, and perception matters. What it is not is why the Cowboys are not winning.
The problem with Romo is not that he dated Jessica Simpson or that he dumped her or that he likes to play golf in the off-season. It is not that he likes to fly to LA for the weekend or enjoys hanging with celebs. The areas that matter are what he does with the ball when he is under duress, how much of a leadership role he is willing to take and how he plays in December.
If he does those things with aplomb, the playoff wins will come and nobody will care whether he is tweeting about dating Paris Hilton while playing No. 10 at Augusta before jetting to LA for a bromance with Nick Lachey.
3. The Cowboys have to be right about The Good Roy Williams.
Their history is littered with wide receivers Owner Jones thought were going to be the next Michael Irvin. There was Joey Galloway and Keyshawn Johnson and Terry Glenn and T.O.
They came with high price tags and headaches and downright chaos in the case of the initials. What none of them brought was a ring. The Cowboys misjudged how close they were or how close the player would get them, or in some cases both.
The Cowboys cannot afford to have done this with The Good RW.
They have neither the depth nor the talent behind Roy for him not to be a clear-cut No. 1. There are doubts about this, mostly in Detroit and a few from watching his work from a year ago. It is not fair to judge on what we saw a year ago. There was too much other stuff going on. What we see from here on out is how The Good RW will be judged and, if Owner Jones was wrong about him, watch out. This season has a chance to get ugly.
4. Be better in December.
Cowboys players are sick of talking about December. They bristle any time anybody mentions their struggles down the stretch. Of course, it is really easy to end this as a topic of conversation.
Win in December.
They were a playoff team a year ago, or at least very close, until they choked against Baltimore and threw up their skirts in Philly. They have a chance for payback this December. They end with Philly at home, in addition to playing the Giants and the Redskins early in the month.
It is worth noting even the one power ranking that had the Cowboys in the Top 10, “SI”’s Peter King, also had them behind NYG (No. 3) and Philly (No. 6). And they are the third-best team in their division until they prove otherwise.
5. Quit with the excuses.
I have a feeling we are going to figure out pretty early on whether this Cowboys team is truly “more whatever” or if we are going to get another dose of the same old.
The litmus test: What do they say?
Do they follow the lead of their coach, getting defensive when anybody questions them and touting all sorts of meaningless stats? Or do they dump the excuses and admit the burden is on them to prove they are more than a middling team?