Monday Night Lights

Man, it's hard to be a Cowboys fan. I know what you're thinking. "Ta-Nehisi, you guys won the game!?!?" Tony Romo was exciting as always. T.O. was awesome. Ditto for Felix Jones. But there is a fatal flaw here and it scares the hell out of me. 10 penalties for 108 yards. I don't know how many face-masks I saw yesterday. Great teams just don't do that. Compare that to the Patriots without Brady--two penalties for 10 yards. I really believe that the difference between good teams and great teams is mistakes. I can't even remember how many facemasks I saw yesterday.

UPDATE: Also, I just want to say that Donovan McNabb is sick. There may be no other QB short of Brady that I would want piloting my team. I know he isn't Manning, but goddamn he just had that "never say die" thing working for him yesterday. I've kinda hated on him for most of his career--mostly because he played in the Cowboys division. I had a similar antipathy for John Elway in his time. But in, like, 1994 I watched Elway throw, like, 50 yard pass to Rod Smith to beat the Redskins in the closing seconds of a game that was surely headed to OT. In those days Rod Smith was unknown and Elway just scrambled out and hit him like it was nothing. And it came at a moment when Elway could have just played safe and took it to OT. At that moment, I knew he was great. I feel like the same happened with Donovan yesterday, even though they didn't win. If you are Philly fan calling for Kevin Kolb, you are an idiot. I mean seriously.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/09/monday-night-lights/5881/