Scattershooting....... while wondering how the stagecoach ran
through December so rapidly?
As I sit here on this brisk January Sunday morning
in tribute to Blackie Sherrod, Skip Bayless, Paul Crume, Dan Jenkins, Randy
Galloway, and all others who pecked out their sports columns I read so
religiously in my youth; I’m not writing in the Dallas Morning News, but
I’m gonna drop a hot sports opinion nonetheless.
Forty-days and forty-nights
have passed since that terrible Thanksgiving Day when we all sat down for a feast of
football. So decimated mentally and physically by the Eagles, the Cowboys
rebounded and revived into a real contender for the Super Bowl everyone thought
belonged to the home team, Arizona Cardinals.
Neither Matthew Stafford’s homecoming nor the feckless
home-field advantage of Jerry’s Cowboys will dissuade me from prognosticating wild
card success, this afternoon in Dallas. Finally, after wandering in the
wilderness of mediocrity and the futility of .500, my precise predictive prowess tells
my faithful readers that the Cowboys will win only its second playoff victory
in 19 years.
If kale is the new super-food, the Cowboys are the new Super Bowl
contender! Their road may run through the frozen tundra, but a championship
game in the wild Seattle northwest, with the despicable denizens a/k/a The 12th
Man is not as daunting in light of the solid win over the Seahawks on October
12.
Am I a home-field hallucinator? A crazy Cowboy, delusional
in Dallas? No, I think a dominating offense and an inspired, friendly crowd
push the Pokes past the unlucky Lions. Defense is the unanswered question for
those who wade into the scary waters of calling a Cowboy victory today; and if Dallas
tries to single-cover Calvin Johnson again, Stafford will make the home squad
pay as if he was Bobby Layne’s ghost. Ball control will win the day: Murray
running-game plus zero takeaways by the Lions, equals another chance at
greatness for the Metroplex’s most storied franchise.
If Jerry-world resembles Disney-land more than Lambeau, the smash-mouth reality of the
road to Glendale could mean a better path for the Cowboys, after
this game; considering they’re the best road team in football? Like a great
book, the story of this season changed drastically after November 27, and it must take another surreal turn this afternoon.
So if Super Bowl XLIX (whatever that number really means) in
four weeks, pits Dallas versus Denver, like the big game 35-years ago at the
Superdome; I’ll be the smartest man in journalism, and if I’m Arizona dreamin’
on this winter’s day, you’ll forget me like yesterday’s headlines. And so it
goes…
©2015 – Mark H. Pillsbury (Fair use of copyrighted work shown herein is not an infringement of copyright law, 17 USC 107)
No comments:
Post a Comment