East Coast Bias: And Then There Were Two

I’m going to take the opportunity to write this while the Giants have not yet been eliminated from the playoffs. As a fan of a team in the NFC East, I’m contractually obligated to hate the three other teams in the division (it’s true, a representative shows up at your house when you buy a piece of paraphernalia with paperwork). I hate the Cowboys far more than the other two teams. There are a host of reasons for this: they’ve been the best, most consistent team in the division during my lifetime, they’ve been Giant-killers more times than I care to recall, Michael Irvin, Jerry Jones, their fans are as patently obnoxious as Yankee fans (even more so considering their insistence that championships won in the NFL before the creation of the Super Bowl don’t really count since they didn’t give out fancy trophies before then and their mind-numbing justifications for this argument), having to listen to Troy Aikman or Moose Johnson announce Giant games, and I’m going to stop there because I could go on. All that being said, the ending of the Seahawks/Cowboys playoff game could not have been more delicious if it was topped with a hint of cinnamon.

At the end of the season, Tony Romo was what we thought he was (with respect to Denny Green), a pretty decent quarterback who had a really good month. He’s also a guy who might never recover from this game.

When Drew Bledsoe got benched, Romo rose to the occasion. Much like a rookie pitcher who runs off a quick five wins before people catch up to him, Romo confused some defensive coordinators at first and why wouldn’t he? Up until him, defensive coordinators playing the Cowboys were planning on rushing Drew Bledsoe and forcing him to make bad decisions. That’s how you beat Drew, it’s well known. Suddenly, the Cowboys had a quarterback who could move around in the pocket and could land short, quick passes before pressure got to him. What people were forgetting, or choosing to ignore, was that Bledsoe beat Romo for the starting job at the beginning of the season for a reason. Had Romo been the better quarterback, Romo would have won the starting job.

In the course of only three months, Tony Romo has gone from the guy Cowboy fans could wait to see, to Dallas’s season-saver, to a shaky rookie, to a guy who delivered the first Stomach Punch Loss* to the Cowboys since the Leon Lett Field Goal Debacle of ’93. In my “I hate the national sports media” kind of way, I find this tremendous. I love it when media darlings don’t perform up to their hype. I love when Peyton Manning fails (although, now it’s almost getting to the point that, because everyone thinks he’s a choker, I want him to win), I love when Donovan McNabb fails, I love that B-Roth had an awful year, I love when Brett Favre fails, and I doubly love it when Tony Romo failed. I would much rather see an under the radar, low key, underdog guy comes through. This is why, if or when the Giants lose, I’d love to see Drew Brees or Steve McNair end up coming through.

*- I know some of my readership hates Bill Simmons, but the “Levels of Losing” column is the best thing he’s ever written. And, while I know the Field Goal Debacle of ‘93 was a meaningless game in the grand scheme of things since the Cowboys won the Super Bowl that year, every Cowboy fan remembers that game. One can also make an argument that this game is a Level One, That Game Loss on the chart. I contend that a game can only go on the “That Game” level if the subject has to become a hermit in Montana following the game. Bill Buckner, Steve Bartman, and Scott Norwood are subjects to That Game losses.

I just wanted to put this up tonight so I could say:

HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!! MY TEAM IS STILL IN THE PLAYOFFS AND THE COWBOYS AREN’T. SUCK IT, T.O. SUCK IT, JERRY! SUCK IT, ONE AND ALL! HAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!

And I’m done.