'(Bleep) Happens!' Are the Cowboys Lying to Themselves? FISH PODCAST

FRISCO - There are a handful of conflicting themes making their way through the corridors here inside The Star with the same ferocity that that nasty flu bug did the same thing before the Dallas Cowboys showed up - well, er, didn't fully show up - for Sunday's loss at Buffalo.

Among those, a Big Four ...

1 - Serious looks in the mirror at issues of effort and talent.

2- Statistical reviews of what went wrong, hoping analytics offer a fix.

3 - The pondering of why this team over the last two years struggles on the road, especially in certain circumstances.

4 - "(Bleep) happens!''

Our long-time colleague Mickey Spagnola, in his semi-optimistic DallasCowboys.com review of Bills 31, Cowboys 10, cleverly harkens back to a good ol' Jason Garrett chestnut about playing conditions, paraphrasing "RedBall'' by writing, "To me, this had nothing to do with being on the road. This had nothing to do with the rainy weather. ...

"Nope, this one Sunday evening here at Highmark Stadium could have happened at home, on the road, in the parking lot or on the moon.''

Is that true? The 10-4 Cowboys had better hope so, because they play at 10-4 Miami this week and to achieve postseason greatness, they figure to have to win road games - maybe four of them to capture the Super Bowl.

But ... are we lying to ourselves when we ...

Deny that Dallas is now 7-8 on the road in the last two years? Or that the record on grass is poor? Or that the record against quality foes is poor?

When Gronk and Terry Bradshaw appear on the FOX postgame show and ponder whether the Cowboys lack "mental toughness,'' should we dismiss that out of hand?

Gronk Rips 'Soft' Cowboys

Or should we - and more importantly, the Cowboys themselves - engage in very deep and non-dismissive exploration of the "why's''?

We lean that way, heavily, favoring the thoughts of Dak Prescott, who insisted the Cowboys employ "great problem-solvers.'' That's actually a positive, because it registers as an admission that there is a "problem.''

'We've Got Great Problem-Solvers!' Dak Reacts To Cowboys as 'Jekyll and Hyde'

Sure, 31-10 "could have happened anywhere.'' But it didn't. It happened on the road, in the elements, against a quality foe. And no amount of white-lie optimism is going to fix that.