The Dallas Cowboys are 2-0, they’re one win away from a New Orleans Saints team that’s already halfway out the door from their first perfect preseason since 1985, and I already know how this story ends. Great August. Forgettable October.
Dallas beat Seattle 17-7 on Aug. 15, then handled Arizona 34-13, which is how you get to 2-0 heading into a preseason finale everyone in the building will insist is meaningless right up until it isn’t. A win Friday night makes it three, an undefeated preseason for the first time since Reagan was still president.
That’s the sales pitch, anyway.
The problem: New Orleans is 0-2, got shut out 34-0 by the Rams, lost to Jacksonville, and coach Kellen Moore has already announced he’s resting nearly the whole starting lineup tonight. The Saints’ first-teamers will jog out for pregame introductions and then go stand on the sideline like extras in a movie about themselves. Moore says three joint practices, 145 first-team snaps worth, already told him everything he needed to know, which is coach-speak for “I’m not risking an ankle for a trophy that doesn’t exist.”
A perfect preseason isn’t a trophy.
It’s a participation ribbon with better lighting.
The real temperature check on this series happened two weeks ago, not in a box score. The Aug. 18 joint practice in Oxnard produced six separate fights — Saints tight end Brock Rechsteiner body-slammed Cowboys safety Jalen Thompson, center Erik McCoy chucked a Cowboys helmet into the air like he was starting a bar fight, and linebacker Donovan Ezeiruaku got tossed for throwing a punch, the second time this camp he’s been sent home for exactly that. The NFL fined both teams $500,000 each after reviewing the tape, and Jerry Jones is already planning to appeal, which is Jerry Jones for “that number offends me personally.” None of that stopped the team from hyping tonight like it’s the Super Bowl:
https://twitter.com/dallascowboys/status/2093307620832559338
None of that drama means the camp’s been a waste. Rookie receiver Camden Brown, an undrafted free agent nobody outside Frisco had heard of a month ago, has looked like a real football player — two touchdowns against Seattle, including a diving one-handed grab that had no business working. If Dallas quietly found a contributor nobody drafted, that outlasts anything that happens against backups on a Friday night.
Compare that to the other soap operas going on in August. Atlanta’s still grinding through another training camp quarterback mess, and Houston’s watching a Texans team with its own contract headaches figure out who’s actually getting paid. Dallas gets to spend its August throwing haymakers at a team that’s already checked out and calling it progress.
Enjoy the parade, Dallas. Just don’t be shocked when the real season shows up and none of this counted for anything.
