Saturday, November 28, 1998

Cowboys need to shape up if these teams meet again

By Randy Galloway

Knight Ridder Newspapers

(KRT)

IRVING, Texas -- About that January collision course. Is that the eventual destination of these two teams? To meet again in the playoffs?

If so, then first things first for the Cowboys. Like scraping themselves off the Texas Stadium floor, where they were splattered on Thanksgiving Day like a dropped bowl of giblet gravy.

Instead of turkey, the Cowboys were overserved another kind of fowl on Thursday -- namely roadrunner. So what's all the beep-beep about this Randy Moss? He was held to three catches.

In a strange afternoon of mistakes, penalties and sensational big plays, the Minnesota Vikings left little doubt about their offensive might and their NFC superiority. The final score of 46-36 defined both the conference regular-season race and the rookie impact of Moss, who scored a long-range touchdown on each of those three catches.

Excuses, however, do overflow for the Cowboys on the defensive side of the ball. Two hours before game time, Deion Sanders informed coach Chan Gailey that he was "No Moss." Nine-toed Deion watched it all from the sidelines in street clothes, nursing his ongoing toe ailment.

Then in the second half, the other starting cornerback, Kevin Smith, also become a sideline spectator with lower back problems. Smith was already wearing skidmarks from two of Moss' touchdown bombs in the first quarter, part of a very quick, 21-6 lead the Vikings grabbed.

It was, however, a 24-19 lead for Minnesota in the third quarter. But only the scoreboard suggested it was still anybody's game. The Cowboys were playing Charlie Williams at one corner and Terry Billups at the other, Billups having been activated from the practice squad this week.

The race was on, and the Vikings always had a turkey leg up on this makeshift Dallas secondary. It was not exactly a brute force kind of massacre. The Vikings' offensive might is built around quarterback Randall Cunningham throwing the ball up for grabs and something good happening because of receivers like Moss and Cris Carter.

Let Mike Holmgren, the Green Bay coach, openly scoff at such folly. This stuff beat his Packers twice, and now it has also whiplashed the Cowboys.

In the solemn confines of the Dallas postgame locker room, defensive alibis were carefully omitted. But if a playoff rematch does materialize, and if Deion turns up healthy, well ...

All that really matters for now is Thursday. Plus, the Cowboys have other problems to consider. Several of those would be on the offensive side of the ball, based on what happened against the Vikings.

"I'm extremely disappointed and frustrated at the way we lost this game," said Troy Aikman, who was talking strictly about the offensive performance.

Despite 455 yards on his passing side of the ledger, and 36 points on the board, Aikman's disgust was accurate.

The Cowboys were one-dimensional the entire afternoon. They got it done strictly by air. Aikman had to throw 57 times because the running game was completely taken away by a Vikings' defense that has been known to give it up on the ground.

Until the fourth quarter, Dallas was always close enough on the scoreboard to want to run the ball. They simply couldn't.

"I came in thinking we'd run it successfully -- we had to run it," said Aikman. "It's what we wanted to do first."

Aikman also dismissed one prevalent locker-room theory that the Vikings stacked for the run and gave up the pass. "What they did was guess along with us, showing an eight-man front when they thought we'd run," he said. "But it wasn't an all-out, run-stopping defensive scheme. We just didn't get it done."

Emmitt Smith was willing, but ended up with 44 yards on 18 carries. When the Cowboys needed ground yardage, particularly in the red zone, there was nothing.

Credit here goes to the Minnesota defensive front. They won that battle.

But while the Cowboys were throwing, and scoring, they also left themselves short on production because of one familar and one very new problem.

Stupid penalties turned possible TDs into field goals on the Cowboys' first two possessions. This continues to be the one glaring no-no of the Chan Gailey era. By now, excuses are null and void.

And the same goes for a sudden case of dropsy by a variety of receivers. There were eight officially counted and a couple of others were marginal. Pitiful.

"I'm talking about guys running wide open and still dropping the ball," Gailey said. "It wasn't just the yards we lost at that point, but the yardage that could have been gained if the catches had been made."

If there's a lucky side for the Cowboys, it's that Aikman escaped injury. He was repeatedly battered, although never sacked. "Troy took more of a beating than I ever wanted him to," said Gailey.

The same goes for all the Cowboys, particularly pride-wise. If there is a January meeting with the Vikings, much will have to change, or the final result won't.

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(c) 1998, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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