Cowboys 2016 Season Preview

Dez Caught It

September is right around the corner and you know what that means: getting day drunk and yelling at the TV. A year has come and gone since I last felt the shriveled hand of sadness drape a warm blanket of disappointment over my corpulent meat husk, and in that time I failed to find anything else to fill the hole in my heart. Football wins again by process of elimination, so I can look forward to putting every ounce of energy I have left over from getting out of bed, brushing my teeth while staring at the sink, and skipping breakfast because I don't deserve food into a team that has hurt me more than any human being ever could. How bout them Cowboys? 

Happiness slips right through his fingertips and now it's fourth and forever

Dez Bryant, as I know him internally, An Excuse for My Family to Say Racist Shit on the Sabbath, will continue his tradition of looking unstoppable for 3 straight games and then being held to 2 catches and a red zone drop in a primetime game the Cowboys lose by 4. Probably to the Redskins, because it doesn't matter if he's 100% healthy and wearing Tony Stark's armor, he is completely shut down by walking trash can DeAngelo Hall, so I'm sure watching him play against Josh Norman will drive me into a dimension of agonizing numbness I didn't even know my soul was capable of. My favorite gameday tradition is my dad angrily informing that television that Dez needs to quit yelling on the sidelines and make a play. Meanwhile a corner and 2 safeties jump him behind the ref's back and deliver a 4 horsemen beatdown at the line of scrimmage. He's like Dusty Rhodes, but instead of being the son of a plumber, Jeff Ireland asked him if his mom charged for a hummer. That's hard times, daddy. 

And then there are the other receivers. If Terrance Williams doesn't walk after his rookie contract is up and catch 10 TDs for the Patriots next season I'll suck my own dick. Cole Beasley is still on the team because if Troy Aikman goes an entire broadcast without saying "first one to the facility, last one to leave" or "gymrat" his CTE overtakes his entire corporeal being like a Symbiote, and there will be a pile of corpses left in his wake on his journey to murder Skip Bayless for implying he was gay that one time 20 years ago. I don't know what a Devin Street is, but if it's anything like Gavin Escobar or James Hanna then you can fucking keep it. 

But all is not lost, my friends. With the fourth overall pick in the draft we took a running back, because fuck me. Ezekiel Elliott is here to pick up right where Darren McFadden left off (yikes), and I for one cannot wait to buy his half-shirt jersey hand-crafted by tiny adolescent Chinese fingers just for him to juke Jeff Heath so hard in practice that he ruptures his own Achilles tendon.

Jeff Heath is the living monument for my hatred of the Cowboys defense. He is a golem composed of mud, clay, and whiffed tackles. He couldn't read a play action if he was screen-looking in Madden, yet he's here because he knows the system. I don't know what that system is but apparently it does what Nintendon't, which is sending a player to the Shadow Realm on special teams. Some people are just born to play football but others have to scratch and claw their way to a roster. Day after day of studying the playbook, staying late after practice, all to cultivate the ability to Stone Cold Stunner the cerebrum so hard their grandmother gets a migraine. Only a real student of the game can cultivate the tools necessary to neuralize someone with the game on the line. His highlight reel is being out of position, diving at shoestrings, and hitting Ricardo Lockette so hard that Percy Harvin's ghost felt it on King Kai's planet. 

Defense wins championships. Except for all of those times that it didn't. It's nice to have the luxury of leaning on a defense that's going to spend a nice chunk of the season without both starting defensive ends and one of its only NFL caliber linebackers. Sean Lee wasted his one healthy year on Brandon Weeden and 4 wins, so I can't wait for him to be a casuality in an Avengers mission while vacationing with his family in Sokovia. Rolando McClain, one of the only defenders on this dumpster team I was really high on (haha get it holy shit I'm funny) is suspended 10 games and overweight because he got addicted to purple drank. That's not a joke, that really happened. He grips and sips codeine because nobody on this team will ever grip a Lombardi. 

We have no defensive ends because they treated concussions and the grind of football with a plant instead of becoming addicted to painkillers and killing themselves at 40. Greg Hardy is gone but I'm pretty sure we're starting his gun futon at left end. Our secondary is a who's who of stars of opposing players' highlight reels. We'll never invest in a safety again after Roy Williams (no, the other Roy Williams), so we'll continue to trot out Barry Church, Gerald Sensabaugh, Danny McCray, and Jeff Fucking Heath until the heat death of the universe. Why have a playmaking safety when you can plug in a special teams gunner who couldn't cover a tight end if you put him in a papoose and made Zack Ertz carry him like Yoda? We'll hear all season about how great the defensive line is being coached up while something called Gackhar leads the team with 2 interceptions, Brandon Carr is immortalized on the backdrop of another Madden cover, and Scandrick gets popped for molly (WOOO) to cope with the fact that he was named after a city where boys are gobbled up by crocs outside Epcot. 

If there's one thing I'm excited about, it's the possibility of dying in my sleep before the season starts. If there's another thing I'm excited about, it's watching the last son of Krypton rush to the second level and send a free safety flying off screen like a Super Smash Bros character. I don't care how this team eventually slash inevitabely slash certainly devastates my delicate psyche, watching that offensive line work is a thing of beauty. When I'm watching game rewind, I'm not just watching Zack Martin and Travis Frederick pancake linemen, I'm edging. I keep that shit going all day, waiting for an off tackle counter that goes for 20 yards before I explode and call for a clean up on aisle tummy. As gross as that as, it can't be anywhere near as sensual as what Romo drunk texts Tyron Smith. Tony can get as many surgeries as he wants, he will mentally never be the same after what Jared Allen did to Doug Free and, by proxy, him. To this day if you sneak up on Tony from the left you'll trigger a Vietnam flashback, and at that point you better hope Jason Witten is there to bring Tony out of Cambodia before he eliminates you with extreme prejudice. 

You know what. Things are actually turning around. I know I'm being cynical, but that's what I do. Maybe there is hope after aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

God. Fucking Dammit. All these years. All these years of Kyle Kosier and Flozell Adams. All these years of Marion Barber finding his first opening of the game and running helmet first into the nose tackle. All these years of Phil Costa snapping the ball mid-audible and torpedoing it over Romo's head with unparalleled velocity because the only way they were going to beat the Cardinals was to Randy Johnson a real one out of the sky. All these years of throwing on 3rd and 1 because the alternative was Tashard Choice running into Leonard Davis' ass. Running the wildcat with Tashard Choice. Tashard fucking Choice. All these years and this god damned team finally assembles the best offensive line in the league and he gets Mortal Kombat X-ray punched right in the vertebrae during preseason. Congratulations dickhole, you finally are a quarterback.

Don't forget, we're the back guys

Don't despair, friends. Our savior is here to tip toe over Romo's shattered spine and take the reigns of America's Team. Dak Prescott is here to ensure the Eagles won't be alone in their race for third in the NFC East. He had an amazing preseason, one I would define as "jaw dropping" or "the birth of a future star" or "fuck you guys I'm not falling for this again." There is not a doubt in my mind that in week 1 the entire pre-game show will be footage of him styling all over vanilla pre-season schemes and as soon as the game starts Jason Pierre-Paul and his Cronenbergian hand will send Dak and Jaxter back to Sandover Village where they can stop collecting Eco and start sticking their noses in the playbook. 

I'll take that over the alternative, which was one season-ending injury away from 6 weeks of Kellen Moore. First name Kellen, last name permanent Butt-Head face with a thousand yard stare and the arm strength of Darren McFadden diving for his phone. He's often described as having all of the tools mentally but just can't do it physically. Yeah man, I know what you mean. Mentally I am the world's greatest and most generous lover, with the ability to make women feel sensations they only read about in books on ancient sorcery. My mind can give you a 9 3/4 that will take you to a world of magic and pleasure, but when it comes time to physically make human sex my penis retreats inside me, declaring six more weeks of winter. Maybe it'll make a good coach some day. If the Dak thing doesn't work out we can look forward to Romo's kids entering the league, both aptly named as reminders of his failures. Hawkins and Rivers Romo. One is named after the Seahawkins that broke his back like Bane, and the other a reminder that he will never be one of the greats like the Tigress and EuBradys. 

You guys know how this season is going to play out. Dak will win 7 or 8 games, then Romo will come back and lose the wild card game to some god damned bird team. Pick one, I don't care. I don't even feel it anymore. Romo will stand, head bowed in despair, as Al Michaels solemnly signs off the broadcast. The screen will fade to black, then cut to a Papa Johns commercial with Jerry Jones wearing Zeke's belly shirt from the draft. This is what I deserve. I will go to work the next day and stay late to scrape enough shekels together to pay off my credit card minimum, and he'll spend a hundred grand to import an endangered mountain gorilla with asthma and shingles so he can film himself choking it to death on the star in the center of the field and pound one off watching the replay on the giant screen. Then he'll pay Jason Garrett 10 grand to skin it and make a suit out of it so he can wear it to Fed Ex Field and throw handfuls of his own feces at Dan Snyder's press box whlie yelling OOK OOK LOOKS LIKE JORDAN HARAMBREED NEEDS TO STOP MONKEYING AROUND as Reed falls down without contact and grabs his knee. Jerry wins. Jerry always wins. Even 60 years from now when he's just a MODOK flying up and down the sideline and serving as Owner-GM-Coach-Quarterback, he will still win. I will keep giving him my money while he manufactures my pain. He pulls the strings while I dance to the pro shop and drop a C note on the jersey of whatever Big 12 receiver we reached on in that year's draft. He's the architect of my misery. 

I'll never learn. I'll never stop watching. I'll never stop thinking this is the year. I get what I deserve.

But there's always next year. The future is always bright when the roof is open so God can watch his favorite team piss and shit themselves. Even after I crawl out of the foxhole of despair this team throws me, I can look forward to the future. I can't wait for Jaylon Smith to be rushed back way too early and tear every ligament from his waist down. Jerry will visit him in the hospital and bestow upon him a special earring, and when he puts it on he will do a Potara fusion with Sean Lee to form Injured Friezerved, Prince of Nerve Damage and Galactic Emperor of Mental Reps.

Dez caught it.