Fanatic
WMMM #083 - This week I share a perspective on the torture of being a fan.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter November 22, 2024 7 min read
This Sunday is my favorite game of the NFL season.
Cowboys @ Washington.
Dallas and Washington play twice every season.
Once in Dallas and once in Washington, D.C.
It's not a particularly close rivalry.
The Cowboys lead the series 78-48-2.
The game in Washington always seems to contain something you've never seen before.
While their fans support them, Washington plays in the nation's capital, and the crowd comprises people from every corner of America working in D.C. to serve our country.
That means that every NFL team has fans attending a Washington home game.
For these reasons, I think it's the better game.
Troy Aikman drafted in 1989
Troy would ultimately become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, winning three Super Bowls with the Cowboys.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006.
But in 1989, Aikman was a rookie NFL quarterback, ill-prepared to play against the best defenses in the world.
The Cowboys had a new owner, Jerry Jones, and a new head coach, Jimmy Johnson.
Instead of easing Aikman into his role, Johnson appeared to be "throwing him to the wolves" by playing him that year.
Aikman went 0-11 that year as a starter.
The Cowboys would finish the season with a 1-15 record.
Care to guess where the single win of 1989 happened?
Yep.
@ Washington
A broken finger caused Troy to miss the 1989 game at Washington.
Steve Walsh, another rookie who had played for Coach Johnson the year before at the University of Miami, started at quarterback that day against the Redskins.
So a Dallas team with an 0-8 record and a backup quarterback, a rookie no less, goes into D.C. in November and beats Washington 13-3.
1992 Super Bowl Champs
Dallas had a fantastic team in 1992, but the game in D.C. went the Redskins way due to a freak play where Aikman and Emmitt Smith fumbled in their end zone.
Washington Safety Danny Copeland recovered the fumble for the winning touchdown.
Washington over Dallas 20-17.
2006 Washington 19 - Dallas 19, 31 seconds left
In a series of unusual games played at Washington, this game may have been the weirdest.
Tied at 19, which is a strange score in football in its own right, Redskins kicker Nick Novak misses a 49-yard field goal with 31 seconds left in the game.
The Cowboys take possession and drive the ball to set up what they believe will be the winning field goal as time expires.
The Cowboys kicker is Mike Vanderjagt, the most accurate kicker in NFL history at that time.
The Redskins block Vanderjagt's field goal attempt.
Sean Taylor, the Redskins outstanding strong safety, picks up the ball on the run and carries it to the Cowboys' 44-yard line.
Kyle Kosier, a Cowboys offensive lineman, forced into playing defense on the play due to the change in possession from the blocked kick, grabs Taylor by the face mask in an attempt to tackle him.
The play ends with no time left on the clock.
The game would have gone to overtime, tied at 19, if it weren't for the face mask penalty called on Kosier.
By NFL rules, no game can end on a defensive penalty.
The Cowboys were assessed 15 yards, and Novak kicked the winning field goal for the Redskins as the clock stood at 0:00.
Washington over Dallas 22-19.
Dallas at Washington, November 24, 2024
Dallas enters Sunday's game with its team in shambles.
After three 12-win seasons, followed by disappointment in the playoffs, the 2024 Cowboys do not resemble the team of the last three years.
Their defense, one of the league's best over that period under Defensive Coordinator Dan Quinn, is ranked 27th out of 32.
Their offense is ranked 20th, down from 5th in 2023.
They head to Washington with a 3-7 record, having lost five games in a row.
To make matters worse, their starting quarterback was recently lost for the season due to injury - they were playing badly with him - and Dallas is playing with a backup, Cooper Rush.
The Commanders (formerly the Redskins) are a team on the rise.
With highly acclaimed rookie QB Jayden Daniels and new Head Coach Dan Quinn (one and the same), the Commanders enter the game with a 7-3 record.
Quinn has his team believing in themselves, and the esprit de corps is visible to fans and spectators.
Washington is a 10.5 favorite as we approach the weekend.
The Path to Fanatic
I began following the Cowboys when I saw them play on Thanksgiving.
I was 9 years old.
Growing up in southern Illinois - anything outside of Cook County (Chicago) is considered "southern" Illinois - my neighborhood did not have a strong allegiance to a particular NFL franchise.
Mike was a Browns fan.
J.T. was a Bears fan.
Ronny was a St.Louis (football) Cardinals (now known as the Arizona Cardinals) fan.
The Green Bay Packers were my favorite.
They were all Midwest teams.
Why the Packers?
Because they won.
9-year olds like to root for teams that win.
The Packers beat the Cowboys in the 1966 NFL Championship game.
1967 was a rematch of that game for the NFL title.
I watched every minute of this famous game from my parents' living room.
The game was known as the Ice Bowl because of the frigid conditions in Green Bay that day.
Green Bay won the right to host the game because it had a better regular-season record (9-4-1) than the Cowboys (9-5).
The day was the coldest New Year's Eve in Green Bay's history.
It was also the coldest weather ever for an NFL game.
The temperature at game time was -15 degrees with a windchill of -48 F.
Two future Hall of Famers coached the teams.
Tom Landry of the Cowboys and Vince Lombardy of Green Bay are now legends of the NFL.
They were former teammates.
Except for being great coaches, Coach Landry and Coach Lombardy were polar opposites.
They could not have been more dissimilar.
Why was the field wet when the tarp to protect it was removed the morning before the game?
Why weren't the sideline heaters working on the visitor's side (the Cowboys bench)?
In researching this story, I uncovered so much more than I could include here.
The Cowboys had overcome a 14-0 deficit to take a 17-14 lead with little time left in the game.
With a windchill of -70 now, QB Bart Starr drove the Packers to the Cowboys 1-yard line.
Two attempts to score yielded 12 inches, as the players had no footing on the ice-covered field.
The Cowboys' famous defense, nicknamed Doomsday, summoned everything it had left to keep Green Bay from scoring.
On third down, with 16 seconds remaining, the Pack's offensive line executed a perfect double-team block on Jethro Pugh, and Starr scored on a QB sneak.
The Packers won their 3rd straight NFL title.
The Cowboys had been seen as an upstart.
The franchise was only seven years old.
They played in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, a traditionally warm-weather climate.
They brought innovation to the game on both sides of the ball.
On offense, many thought the warm weather allowed them to play a more open game with more motion and passing.
They were entertaining.
Possibly because they were new, innovative, played in warm weather, and had a stoic coach who wore a dress suit and hat on the sidelines and rarely showed emotion, the media had chosen to label the Cowboys as a "soft" team.
"Soft" teams couldn't win the "big" games, and Dallas had already begun to lose some of them.
And who could argue when comparing the Cowboys to the "black and blue" group of Midwest teams with long histories with the NFL: the Packers, Bears, Lions, and Browns?
But, the Cowboys had just gone toe to frostbitten toe with the NFL Champs on their field and came up 2 feet short.
Immediately after the game, Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith expressed pride in his teammates and said, in a figurative sense, that the Cowboys really did not lose a game that day. The effort expended was its own reward.
I've been a Cowboys fan ever since.
Glory Years
My first job after college was with the Dr Pepper Company.
At the time, Dr Pepper's world headquarters were on Mockingbird Lane in Dallas, Texas.
I still call Dallas home today.
As the Cowboys got better and won Super Bowls, it became popular to be a Cowboys fan.
I recall a point in time when Dallas would virtually shut down at game time.
From September through December, Sundays revolved around the time of the Cowboy game.
It wasn't just Dallas or Texas.
The Cowboys were popular across the country.
They became known as "America's Team."
It was easy to like them.
And as with everything and everyone that experiences success, it becomes easy to hate them.
This was especially true after Jerry Jones bought the team and fired the only coach the Cowboys had ever had.
After 28 years as Head Coach, Tom Landry was let go when Mr Jones bought the team and hired his college buddy, Jimmy Johnson, as the new Head Coach.
In my opinion, you either loved them or hated them.
There was no in-between with the Cowboys.
That's not the case any longer.
It's Easy to be a Saint in Paradise
The 2024 team is too pathetic for fans of other teams to "hate" them.
If anything, they pity the Cowboys’ fans.
The glory years are a distant memory for a team that played in 8 Super Bowls and won 5 in their first 35 years of existence.
The Cowboys haven't played in a Super Bowl game in 28 years.
The Patriots teams of Belichick and Brady assumed the "America's Team" moniker in the late 2000s.
Andy Reid's and Patrick Mahomes' Kansas City Chiefs have replaced the Patriots and are attempting to win their 3rd straight Super Bowl this season.
All of the attention and excitement for Sunday's Cowboys game is for the Commanders.
The Cowboys?
5-game losing streak, can't score, terrible defense, backup QB.
Sometimes, it's more fun being a fan when you have low expectations.
The Cowboys have 'em right where they want 'em.
Go Cowboys!
Lessons Learned
1) It's easy to be a saint in paradise.
2) When you are looking to connect with someone, sports are a source of deep emotions.
3) The journey is more informative than the destination.
4) The effort expended is its own reward.
Thank you for reading.
Jeff
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