After the dust settled, dropping the Cowboys to a miserable 3-6 record, Lamb solemnly said of this play, “Couldn’t see the ball. Couldn’t see the ball, at all. The sun.” That’s…a major problem! But, as the 82-year-old Jones grumbled after the game, the sun has always been a factor, and both teams have to deal with it. What’s interesting, though, is how Jones handled basic questions from the media about this. When asked about the possibility of putting curtains on the massive windows, which would seemingly provide a permanent resolution, Jones said, “Well, let’s tear the damn stadium down and build another one?” He later added, “By the way, we know where the sun is going to be when we decide to flip the coin or not. We do know where the damn sun is going to be in our own stadium.”
That last bit reads as a bit of a dig at head coach Mike McCarthy, the person whose job it is to know that the sun will render his players incapable of sight, and should have chosen to attack the other end zone when the Cowboys won the opening coin toss.
So that gives us one potential strategy: always win every coin toss, forever. Of course—and stick with me here, Jer—you could have considered this 15 years ago when building this expensive fortress! The best way to keep the sun out of your eyes is to face north and south, as any Little Leaguer who’s ever played catch can tell you. (By the way, Lamb said he’s “one thousand percent” in favor of installing some curtains.)
At this point, the Cowboys’ goose is cooked. NFL.com puts the team’s playoff chances at 4%, and the hapless New York Giants are the only NFC team with fewer wins. Their quarterback is preparing for season-ending surgery, their coach is the most fired man in the world, and their owner is too stubborn to fix a very fixable problem that isn’t going anywhere, at least until the sun explodes. (Bigger problem, that.) If the Dallas Cowboys are America’s Team, it’s fitting that the biggest theme of their latest loss is arguably the most American thing there is: a baffling refusal to change.
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