My living room. 7:30pm. After a long day of playing the role of painter’s assistant for my buddy James, and receiving play-by-play text message updates during the Vikings game from another friend ( I had no radio on hand), I felt I had wholly earned the right to sit quietly and watch the Dallas/New York game. Especially considering it was my regularly-scheduled day off, and my plans of watching football, over-eating and not showering all day had come to an abrupt end during the second quarter of the Jets/Bills game that afternoon. And much to my anxiety, the Jets were down at the time. I had my left hand buried deep within a potato chip bag and my right wrapped around a glass of water, ass glued to the tweed couch. Lets play some football boys. My expectations were for the Giants to assault Dallas, defensively, injuring QB Tony Romo for good and ending this season’s Gossip Girl nonsense so prevalent in the heated wild card days. It didn’t exactly turn out like that. The first quarter was scoreless; the second was low-scoring -- riddled with sacks and penalty flags, though it gave New York a reason to fight; third verse, same as the first; and then finally the fourth in which the Giants embarrassed themselves and let Dallas win. It was disgusting.
Folks, there is no way around the pitiful truth: New York played like crap. How can you go from being one of the most organized teams in the NFL to being humiliated by a trashy, VH1 team like the Cowboys? I suppose it’s totally possible that the offensive has no idea how to function in Plaxico Burress’ absence, that their hopes for pride and glory literally shot itself in the leg. Ha! That aside, it’s entirely obvious that Eli Manning isn’t the kind of quarterback that can carry a team with his left arm and throw a football with his right. He’s nothing like Peyton. But it makes sense that New York would lose to a team like Dallas. With all the legal problems facing some of their players off the field, homogenization is taking place and the red and blue of the 2000s are starting to look a lot like the silver and blue of the 90s.
The only noteworthy aspect of the game was the incredible number of sacks: Manning 7 times, Romo 3 times, two of which were back-to-back sacks.He was mildly injured on the latter. 
Post-game the heads on ESPN were less interested in the playoff picture and more interested in this ongoing drama among Tony Romo, Terrell Owens and Jason Witten. Their equilateral love triangle, it seems, has morphed into what looks like, at least from Owens’ perspective, a right triangle, leaving him far out of the QB/receiver relationship. I expect Owens to break down into tears on national television again, and soon, if this sticky Montel Williams situation doesn’t mend itself. He played no significant part in the game against New York, yet the Cowboys destroys them in the final quarter. Emotion aside, the facts remain, when broken down into numbers, that Witten seems to be a much better receiver than Owens at this point.
Terrell Owens is a joke and I mock him relentlessly every time I watch a Cowboys game. Even in the press, he is more often referred to as “T.O.” than just “Owens”, like some whinny, Hollywood starlet who is a reoccurring character of Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab. C’mon, Terrell. Be a football player. Or failing that, retire and get a show on the Disney Channel where it’s perfectly acceptable to be a whiny, 14-year-old girl.But mostly I blame it on ESPN and the other media outlets. Sportscenter was showing clips of the press conference following the Sunday night game and mocking Owens for what he was wearing. I don’t watch ESPN to hear the fashion opinions of watered-down sports journalists (if you can call them that). Just show me my highlights and analysis and shut up. This Dallas offensive relationship rift wouldn’t be such a festering wart if only it wasn’t reported on and talked about in every broadcast and in every NFL blog on the web. (And yes, I realize I’m being a hypocrite.)But the snow now falls quietly tonight in Minneapolis, no more violent bursts of arctic anger. Somewhere a sleeping Jason Witten is dreaming his sweet dreams and Marion Barber is thinking about how to spend the $250,000 he made for running really fast. These are beautiful times we live in, people. And I know when I wake up tomorrow that all this NFL nonsense -- Romo, Burress, T.O. -- will seem like a faraway dream I had in some other life and I can move on to more important things, like trying really, really hard to become interested in the WNBA.
NFL Blog Writer: Matthew Homan