Shreveport Times:Winning ugly is just not reliable

[TK]

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/html/7B4B7161-0853-4035-8F06-A0FCB554FC76.shtml

ROY LANG III: Winning ugly is just not reliable

Roy Lang / The Times

Posted on November 3, 2003

IRVING, Texas - Bill Parcells stated last week that is was now "showtime" in Dallas. Five games - four at home - in the month of November to determine how good the first-place Cowboys really were.

Obviously, Parcells could have never envisioned his team would remake The Gong Show at Texas Stadium on Sunday, getting booed off the field after a despicable display of so-called football in the first quarter.

It was ugly, worse than ugly. But this is the NFL, where a win is a win - especially when you are in first place in the NFC East. Again, the Cowboys defense enabled the team to survive its own pathetic offense, and the 21-14 victory over the Washington Redskins proves how crucial a bruising, dominating defense can be.

At first glance, the Cowboys didn't resemble a first-place squad from Pop Warner ball let alone the top league in the world. The offensive nightmare Dallas experienced last week at Tampa Bay was nothing compared to what took place here early on.

No one seemed to be immune to mistakes - dropped passes, bad passes, bad penalties.

Whatever Parcells told his team in the locker room at the half must have scared them - they came out after halftime and looked like a well-oiled machine.

Or maybe it was the play of Roy Williams, Terence Newman, Greg Ellis and Dexter Coakley - stars leading a defense that is playing as well as anyone in the league.

"You realize that you have to have confidence in the offense, and we do," Ellis said. "It doesn't do any good to put our heads down if the offense is struggling. We have to keep going back out there and give our offense a chance to score."

Imagine what this team could do to opponents if the offense played like the defense every week. They can do it, as witnessed in a 24-7 win against Arizona and a 38-7 triumph at Detroit. But those teams have combined for five wins. The next five games come against teams at .500 or better. Dominating just one side of the ball won't work against everyone.

Quincy Carter and Troy Hambrick led the Cowboys to 400 yards in total offense while Washington garnered just 213. The ball movement needs to stay while the careless penalties and mental errors need to vanish.

"We know as a football team we can't turn the ball over four times and expect a win," Carter said. "But you have to accept a win. We've definitely got to learn from this. You just settle down and play football and stop making mistakes. That's the bottom line. That's the way you win games."

It's Carter and the offense that need to step it up and play four solid quarters. One day the defense will need a pick-me-up. And the offense only owes it to their teammates on the other side of the ball to be there. Just in case.