10. Does this feel like 1991 to anyone else? An empowering playoff win, followed by an embarrassing blowout playoff road loss, leading to disappointment but not necessarily discouragement? That year it was Detroit, 38-6. This year it is Minnesota, 34-3. In '92 the Cowboys won the Super Bowl. In '10 ...
9. Congrats, Roy Williams. You punctuated an absolute waste of a season by missing the team plane to Minnesota. Well, didn't you? What? You were there? Prove it.
8. How bad is the 31-point loss in the post-season? Would you believe it's the Cowboys' second-worst playoff loss ever, behind only the aforementioned 32-point shellacking in Detroit on Jan. 5, 1992.
7. When Gerald Sensabaugh lost sight of the ball - I don't think he's found it yet - and gave up the 47-yard touchdown to Sidney Rice for Vikings 7, Cowboys 0, it was the first points allowed by Dallas' defense in the first quarter of a road game all season. The defense picked a bad time to have its worst game.
6. Toldja kicker Shaun Suisham would cost the Cowboys a game at some point. The Vikings were clearly the better team, but Suisham's two wide left field goals changed the tenor of the whole game.
5. Keith Brooking, stop it. Claiming the Vikings are "classless" for Brett Favre's late touchdown pass just makes you and your team look like crybabies. If you don't want them to score, stop 'em. Maybe if you made a play between the lines instead of just shooting your wad in that theatrical "We're gonna hit 'em in the mouth!" pre-game schtick, the Vikings wouldn't have embarrassed you in the first place. But I don't blame the Vikings for scoring on their last drive. Maybe they're going to run the same play against the New Orleans Saints next week.
4. Most disappointing play of the game was Tony Romo's double-pump interception. You can live with bad throws, but not bad decisions. That was the old Romo, panicking and desperately trying to make a play where no play was there to be made. Thought he'd matured past that, but I guess not. It was a sad regression to a troubling trait.
3. See, the thing that makes Wade Phillips a Stumbledoofus isn't just the fact that he didn't go for 4th-and-1 at Minnesota's 30 on Dallas' second drive. It's the fact that after the game when he attempted to explain his lack of gonads he had no idea it was 4th-and-1. "Well, it wasn't fourth and one," Phillips said. Yes, it was. Inexcusable.
2. I called Vikings 23, Cowboys 21. But I'm hardly gloating. Sad to see it end. I'd rather be happy than right, know what I mean? And, as hard as it is to root against a team with a fan as cool as Prince, two of my soul-sapping kryptonites in this world are Brett Favre and American Idol. Imagine my disgust at watching him celebrate in the post-game locker room to Pants on the Ground. Voh. Mit.
1. I've called Wade Phillips "Dead Man Coaching" all season, but I think - think, I say - he did enough this year to earn another season as head coach. Right? That said, the combined score of the Cowboys' last two season-ending games is a staggeringly hideous 78-9. You convinced he's the right guy to lead the Cowboys two more levels, to a Super Bowl?
