With the Buffalo Bills advancing to the AFC title game this year, here is an updated list of the NFL teams that have not won a divisional playoff game in at least 25 years:
Miami Dolphins
Washington Deadskins
Cleveland Browns
Cincinnati Bengals
Detroit Lions
Dallas Cowboys
That’s good company right there.
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Sixty-six years ago today, Edward Van Halen was born in Amsterdam. When he was seven, he and his family moved to Pasadena, California. Eddie and his brother Alex formed a rock band in 1972 and released the most iconic debut album in music history in 1978. And every rock-and-roll guitarist since has wanted to be Eddie.
In honor of the world’s all-time greatest guitarist, check out this video from a 1995 Van Halen concert in Toronto. And be amazed. When he breaks into “Cathedral” at about the 6:30 mark, be blown away that any human can make a guitar do that. Eddie Van Halen did not invent the electric guitar, but he owned it. Mastered it. Dominated it.
Which would be more of a devastating gut-punch to the Cowboys? To lose to the Giants at the very last second in a dramatic catastrophic collapse? Or to come from behind to beat the Giants, pack up and fly to DFW, think about the next week’s potential playoff opponent during the flight, drive home, sit down in front of the TV, and watch the Eagles jump offsides on Washington’s fourth-and-one to hand WFT the NFC East and get knocked out of the playoffs at 10:30 at night?
I think scenario #2 would have been a lot more fun, but history dictates it was always going to be scenario #1.
Either way. So juicy.
Trailing by four points a little over midway through the fourth quarter, Dallas started at their own 25-yard line and methodically marched to the Giants seven. Confidently. Triumphantly. The Cowboys overcame three third downs and converted a fourth-and-two on what was an unheard of 17-play drive. It felt like some kind of devilish destiny. The Cowboys are terrible, but the Giants, yes, are probably worse. It looked like Dallas was going to win this lousy game and subject all of us to another week of the Mike McCarthy inspiration tour. In the driving sleet in an empty Giants Stadium, Dallas had a first-and-goal at the New York seven yard line. I felt sick to my stomach.
But, then, history took over and all was made right in the football world.
1st down – shotgun formation, Dalton sacked for a ten yard loss
2nd down – shotgun formation, Dalton incomplete across the middle to CeeDee Lamb
3rd down – shotgun formation, Dalton pressured, forced to his left, lofts a dying duck to the middle of the end zone that is intercepted by Giants rookie Xavier McKinney
Dalton said after the game he was throwing it up for grabs, hoping somebody would make a play. He told reporters he wishes he had thrown the ball out of bounds since it was only third down. Hmm. Sounds reasonable.
We all should have seen it coming. We knew the Cowboys weren’t going to punch it in there. Of the myriad Cowboys issues this season, one of the more glaring is their inability to score touchdowns inside the Red Zone. Dallas took four trips inside the New York 20-yard line yesterday and came away with only one touchdown. Each of the other three trips was stymied by a Dalton sack. Dallas scored touchdowns on only 27 of their 54 Red Zone opportunities this year. Too many field goals. Too little imagination.
The longer historical narrative should also have comforted us. The Cowboys always lose when they’re playing a divisional opponent in the season finale with a playoff spot on the line. Five times since 2008, Dallas has needed a win against another NFC East team on the last day of the season to qualify for the playoffs, and all five times they have lost.
2008 Philadelphia 44-6
2011 New York 31-14
2012 Washington 28-18
2013 Philadelphia 24-22
2020 New York 23-19
So, the next time it happens, maybe as early as next season, you can bet on Dallas to lose to WFT or WFC or whatever Snyder’s calling that outfit then. And it’ll be just as satisfying.
Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Julio Franco…
The sign has arrived and it’s finally becoming a reality: Amarillo will have a Chuy’s restaurant and it will open in mid-January! For two years we’ve been teased with rumors of land purchases and permits, remodeling and renovations, strategy revisions and pandemic delays. I had just about given up hope when the truck and trailer rolled into town carrying that big beautiful sign! If everything can continue now on schedule, move over Abuelo’s! In less than three months, it’s all chicken enchiladas with the Boom Boom sauce and that green chili rice!
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My great friend, college roommate, Delta brother, and roofing partner Mike Osburn is running for re-election as an Oklahoma State Representative from the district that includes our old Edmond stompin’ grounds. His new TV ad features his wonderful wife, Holly, and their three kids, and it’s terrific.
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Following their 5th loss of the season on Sunday, the Dallas Cowboys made big news yesterday by signing a backup punter to the practice squad. Yes, you read that correctly. Special teams director John Fassell says they signed Hunter Niswander as insurance, in case of an injury to Chris Jones or Greg the Leg. That’s right. Not a defensive back or linebacker, not an offensive lineman. This team now has two punters. With their turnover ratio at -13, do they even need one?
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In his one-and-a-half quarters of relief for the concussed Andy Dalton, Cowboys quarterback Ben DiNucci suffered more sacks against Washington Sunday than completed passes. His line after the game was that, coming out of James Madison University, he’s never really seen pass rushers like Chase Young. Oops.
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If I’m being generous — very, very, very generous — I can’t see the Cowboys finishing this season at anything better than 5-11. If they split with every team in this atrocious division and if they split their games against Minnesota and the Bengals (a big IF), they’ll finish with a Dave Campo record. And Jerry Wayne will say they’re just one offensive lineman and one defensive playmaker away. Or punter.
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We’re celebrating another fabulous Missions Sunday here at Central. After sharing the communion meal together with our 14 local and foreign missions partners, our church family gave $335,296 towards our missions efforts in 2021! That’s a lot of money for one church our size to give in one day! And it’s still coming in! Praise the Lord! I’m so blessed by our God to belong to a church that puts God’s mission to others at the front and center of our existence and then puts it money there, too. This is such a deep part of who we are as a congregation. This is the way we express our faith in God and experience the abundance of his blessings. And this is one of the most significant ways we’re all connected.
Bill Parcells famously declared, “You are what your record says you are.” With that in mind, here is a list of the teams in the NFL who have not won a divisional playoff game in at least 25 years:
Buffalo Bills
Miami Dolphins
Washington Deadskins
Cleveland Browns
Cincinnati Bengals
Detroit Lions
Houston Texans
Dallas Cowboys
This is the worst of the worst in the NFL, the teams that have gone the longest at being the most irrelevant. This is the company the Cowboys have been keeping since 1995. The Cowboys are not one player or one coach away. The Cowboys are the Bengals and the Lions and the Dolphins.
At least it can be said that we are watching history with this current version of the Cowboys. Only three teams in the history of the NFL have given up more than the 218 points Dallas has given up in its first six games. The last time it happened was in 1961. Statistically speaking, we are watching the worst defense in the NFL in my lifetime! Arizona averaged almost seven-and-a-half yards per play last night!
But it’s not just the defense. Eighty-four of those 218 points given up this year have come off Dallas turnovers. The Cowboys committed four more in last night’s debacle against the Cardinals, two on fumbles by the highest paid running back in NFL history on back-to-back possessions. Andy Dalton looked lost. And the Cowboys may as well have set up five chairs on the line the way the Cards defense was running through to the backfield.
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On this day in 1950, Thomas Earl Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida. At the age of 26, with his band of mostly childhood friends, The Heartbreakers, he released their self-titled debut album and I had a rock-and-roll companion I could grow old with. In his memory, check out this promotional video of a little-known deep cut from that first album, “Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
I love the rebellious teenage angst lyrics in that song. This is the young Tom Petty, but anybody could see he was already a genius at turning a phrase and writing a really good lyric:
“Your mama don’t like it when you run around with me / but we got to hip your mama that you got to live free.”
While we’re at it, here are my favorite lines from the other nine songs on that first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album.
“I can’t stop thinkin’ about how I dig rockin’ around with you.”
“There is no sense in pretending / your eyes give you away / something inside you is feeling like I do / we’ve said all there is to say.”
“Said it’s so good, said it’s unreal / might not last, but it’s no big deal.”
“Well, the moon sank as the wind blew / and the street lights slowly died.”
“A roar turned into whispers.”
“You never said you had no number two / I need to know about it if you do / If two is one, I might as well be three / it’s good to see you think so much of me.”
“You got ruby lipstick, rose petal rouge / dime store jewelry, cheap perfume.”
“White light cut a scar in the sky / thin line of silver / the night was all clouded with dreams / wind made me shiver.”
“Well, she was an American girl, raised on promises / she couldn’t help but thinkin’ that there was a little more to life somewhere else / after all it was a great big world / with lots of places to run to / and if she had to die tryin’, she had one little promise she was gonna keep.”
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Great Cities Missions has released a really wonderful video that highlights the missionaries, church planters, and congregations they equip and support all over Latin America and in Spanish-speaking churches in the U.S. The video is hosted by Grant Boone of CBS Sports, a great friend of GCM, and it really captures the passion of Kelley and Brian and Chris and all our great partners in this extraordinary Gospel organization. Junior and Patricia Lira are featured at the beginning, Byron and Sandra Cana are seen passing out food and resources in Bogota, Max Lucado makes an appearance at the end, and our own Leon Wood’s surprise cameo steals the whole thing! Watch the video; you’ll be encouraged and inspired.
At Central, we are incredibly honored and blessed to be founding partners with Great Cities Missions for almost 50 years. And we love celebrating our friendships during Missions Month and giving the glory and praise to our God.
Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Pat Verbeek…
Mainly to assure my co-workers and appease a couple of our church elders, I submitted myself to a Covid-19 test yesterday. I came out positive for burning nostrils and watery eyes and negative for the coronavirus. Everybody around me can breathe a huge sigh of relief. While wearing a large mask.
The Houston Texans should have fired Bill O’Brien at least four years ago, long before he traded away Jadeveon Clowney, DeAndre Hopkins, and all those draft picks. The Texans have the highest payroll in the NFL this year and they have started out 0-4. Reminds me of another embarrassingly futile NFL team in Texas.
When a team begins a football season at 1-3, it has a 14% chance of making the playoffs. That statistic will probably be skewed a bit this year because the NFC East is led right now by a team with one win. The Cowboys might win this division with a 7-9 record. But they already have a 100% chance of extending their streak of consecutive seasons without winning a divisional playoff game to 25 years. They should design another commemorative patch. “Silver Substandard” or something like that.
Missions Month is my favorite season at Central.
I’ve added our middle daughter Valerie’s brand new blog, “The Kitchen Sink,” to my links on the bottom right hand side of this page. Valerie is the newly-married, newly-employed Youth Minister at the Contact Church in Tulsa. She just launched the blog over the weekend and just posted her first article about our (Christians) and her (personal) relationship between our citizenship in heaven and our national politics. You can click here to read it or scroll through the links on the right. Man, I really love this girl. I admire Valerie. I wish I had the same passion for the Kingdom when I was her age. I’m really blessed to be her dad. I’m very thankful to God.
The Dallas Cowboys are recognizing their inaugural season of 1960 this year with a commemorative patch on their uniforms and, evidently, by replicating the results from that expansion campaign. The Cowboys have allowed 146 points through their first four games this season, the most since those first-year Cowboys gave up 136 through their first four contests. They’ve allowed 38+ points in three straight games for the first time since 1960. And, had the Falcons not completely lost their minds in a once-in-a-lifetime onside kick meltdown two weeks ago, the Cowboys would be on their way to matching that first year’s 0-10 start.
It’s genius, right? Commemorating the 1960 origins of the team by playing like them?
Actually, that’s not fair to the 1960 Cowboys. That very first edition did not have a single draft pick on the roster. That team was built by an expansion draft in which the other twelve NFL teams were allowed to protect 25 of their 36 players and the Cowboys had 24-hours to select three men from each team’s bottom eleven. And that team played with heart. They didn’t win a single game that season – a 31-31 tie with the New York Giants in week eleven was the only non-loss – but they played hard enough to capture the city’s imagination and build a solid following.
This current Cowboys team makes those 1960 forerunners they’re trying to honor look like the ideal.
In yesterday’s blowout loss to the Browns, the Cowboys gave up 333-yards and 24-first downs — wait for it — in the first half! Cleveland averaged 7.7-yards per play over the first two quarters and, at one point, scored 34-unaswered points to take a 41-14 lead. The Dallas defense let the Browns second and third string backs run for 307-yards, the most rushing yards given up by the Cowboys in a single game in franchise history. The Cowboys defense is giving up a touchdown for every twelve passing attempts! This defense is all bad angles, over-pursuit, sloppy tackling, and zero discipline. It’s historically bad. 1960 bad. Which, again, is an insult to everyone who played in 1960.
But it’s not just the defense, the special teams are also killing the Cowboys. Watching Tony Pollard return kicks is like watching Rick Perry on Dancing with the Stars: he’s doing it terribly, I have no idea who chose him for the job, and his partners have to pretend like it’s good. Only the Cowboys can block an opponent’s PAT and have it turn into two points for their opponent. While the offense is rolling up points like a pinball machine, they have also turned the ball over a league-worst nine times in the first four weeks. And the Cowboys offense is the third most penalized offense in the league. It’s undoubtedly a complete team effort.
So, yes, let’s honor those 1960 expansion Dallas Cowboys. Let’s hear it for that collection of misfits and castoffs who lost their first ten games and finished without a win. At least those Cowboys had a clue. They knew where they were going and they had a plan for getting there. They had a creative and energetic general manager, a brilliant and innovative head coach, and an owner who stayed out of the way.
With the Buffalo Bills advancing to the AFC title game this year, here is an updated list of the NFL teams that have not won a divisional playoff game in at least 25 years:
Sixty-six years ago today, Edward Van Halen was born in Amsterdam. When he was seven, he and his family moved to Pasadena, California. Eddie and his brother Alex formed a rock band in 1972 and released the most iconic debut album in music history in 1978. And every rock-and-roll guitarist since has wanted to be Eddie.
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