Cowboys Are 'Imploding!' Claims Anonymous NFL Exec 'Source'
FRISCO - We've done this for a living long enough now - "Big J Journalism'' and all that - to fully understand the utilization of the necessary evil known as "the anonymous source.''
But we know that doesn't curb the frustration of the media consumer who encounters a tantalizing or controversial or incendiary take and believes the "source'' or the author is hiding behind a shield of cowardly anonymity.
So, along comes the "tantalizing and controversial and incendiary take'' via The Athletic's Mike Sando, who writes that your Dallas Cowboys, who after Sunday's 22-20 loss at the Miami Dolphins dropped their road record to 3-5, are "imploding.''
NFC East - The Athletic
The Athletic
That's right. The NFC's best team, the San Francisco 49ers, lost three straight earlier this year. (And just got blown out at home on Christmas by the Ravens.) The NFC's second-best team, the Philadelphia Eagles, are fresh off having lost three straight as well. (And just hung on for dear life at home on Christmas over the junky Giants.)
The Cowboys? They are 10-5 and they are going to the playoffs and they just lost two straight (in back-to-back East Coast swings at contending Buffalo and contending Miami) ... and it's the Cowboys who are singled out for "imploding''?!
“I think their identity is what it is,” an exec with NFC East experience said. “A front-running bunch, and when they start off hot, they ride it, and when they have to go blow for blow, I think there is … imploding there.”
Whoa. This "anonymous exec'' is from the NFC East? So it's an "anonymous exec'' from either ...
*The Eagles, who are by their own admission "miserable'' and who as we just mentioned just lost three straight ... and have been backstabbing their own team leader Jalen Hurts.
*The Giants, who entered the weekend at 5-9.
Or the Commanders, who are 4-11 and getting ready to clean house, starting with the firing of coach Ron Rivera.
An "exec'' from one of those three teams has the temerity to give interviews in which he's ripping the Cowboys for "imploding''?!
It is true that Dallas plays better when it gets a lead and when it "starts off hot.'' But we'd add that that same characterization is true of all 32 teams; once you "start off hot,'' you are by definition "playing better'' and more likely to win.
So yeah, when Dallas gets ahead 40-0 over somebody ... Dallas acts like a "front-runner.''
This doesn't sound like "analysis'' from an "NFC exec.'' It sounds like a cheap shot.
One more thing, as we're a bit bothered by The Athletic's boundary-pushing in this ostensible "news story.'' Sando opts to add his own editorial spin on this, writing, "Opponents have long considered the Cowboys to be front-runners.''
Is that a fact? We're not really familiar with some long-standing universally-held view as part of a massive wave of multiple "sources'' that the Cowboys are any such thing. ... and - plucked from somewhere among the many, many "NFC execs'' who feel that way - we'd sure like just one of them to attach his name to it.
