First of all, hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Secondly, we lost to the Cowboys with a backup quarterback as 10 point favorites at home. We have made our way from on top of the world at 7-2 back to the middle of the pack at 7-5. I feel as though I must accept some of the blame. Since titling a blog “We Are A Wagon,” we have not won a single game. At this point, it is safe to say we aren’t at all a wagon. A shitstorm has brewed up in DC and the vibes could not be any lower.
I’ve gone through all of the stages of grief and will run you through them. For those who don’t know, the 5 stages follow as: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Denial came during the game. As I sat at FedEx, I had faith until they went up 9-20. I sat there believing we would find a way to win until I realized we’d need another miracle. We somehow managed to find Terry for an 86 yard touchdown. All we needed was the extra point to go into overtime. Then, no longer auto Austin shanks a kick into the gold lot sending myself into stage 2, anger.
He had already missed an extra point and a kick earlier in the game. He had made a 51 yarder just a few minutes earlier. He was all over the place this game. The thought of why not go for two and win the game came up. Obviously, the hindsight was 2020. My friend who claims to be a Cowboy’s fan, but we think he does it just to piss everyone off started texting straight away. He even called me to rub it in. I proceeded to remove him from multiple group chats. I was in disbelief by the fact that we managed to get our hopes up then have our hearts ripped out just like that. Following the game, I went to the local bar where stage three took place, bargaining.
We ordered a bucket a miller lites and did everything we could to reduce the dissonance. This was supposed to be a rebuild year. We are playing with house money. We didn’t expect to actually be in the playoff picture. Jayden is still a rookie. Lattimore needs to come back. The team has so many holes. We need wide receivers, corners, defensive ends. The week 14 bye is killing us. We cooked up everything in the book to cope with the loss and ease the pain. Shortly afterwards, the most unfortunate stage kicked in, depression.
I believe I have found myself in a limbo stage of depression and acceptance. I had to sit at Thanksgiving with my extended family who is mostly Skin’s fans where we talked about how our team is a fraud. I had to go to work on Monday where I sat in a melancholy mood. Everytime I’d open up twitter, it would just talk about us losing. I’m supposed to enjoy scrolling through twitter not get upset. Through all of the stages, acceptance that we are frauds was the conclusion I came to. Acceptance that Kilff is incapable of winning games in the second half of the season. Acceptance that Jayden is not the second coming of Jesus Christ. Acceptance that this team has a good chance of not even making the playoffs this season. All of the bad from the past twenty years poured on in.
The worst part about it all is that I got my hopes up. I genuinely believed this special something we had cooking was going to carry throughout the whole season. I believed we had a chance to make it to the playoffs and go toe to toe with the Lions in the NFC championship. We were in the conversation for having the two seed. Now, if we do make it, we will be taking the last wildcard spot. We will likely have to go up to Philly and play them for the third time this season in a win or go home game. If I was an unbiased gambler, I think I know who I’d be betting on.
I’ve talked about how fast things change in this league. To complement my point I’ve reiterated time and time again, it took three weeks for everything to fall apart. I don’t even have the slightest amount of confidence that we will win on Sunday. This defense will probably make Will Levis look like the second coming of Tom Brady mixed with Lamar Jackson. The lock of the game should be him to throw a pick. He does it every week. Everything would feel so much different had we won on Sunday. Even with our best team in the last 10 years, we could not beat the Cowboys with their worst. It’s all just a disaster. I used to enjoy watching football. I was excited to watch games. Not anymore.
The reality of the situation is by tomorrow morning I will have convinced myself that we are going to run it up on them. I will get in the car and drive to FedEx just to get disappointed. The line will close with us at 5-6 point favorites. Let me do everyone a favor and tell you it would not be wise to bet on us. I don’t have the stomach to lie through my teeth and say it’s a must bet. I wish I had the heart to confidently write we will win this game. At this point, just bet on Luke McCaffrey unders because this staff absolutely hates giving him the ball. We used a third round pick just to sit him on the bench. We’d rather throw it to John Bates just so he can fumble and fuck everything up.
I don’t think there’s any going back to the first three stages. It’ll just be the last two if we lose. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. At least, we have family. Because football isn’t everything. It’s just a game where large, athletic humans run and throw a ball toward a 10 yard space to score 6 points. Just to watch your gimp kicker who magically appears on the IR after his worst career game go ahead and absolutely ruin your week. That’s how it’s done around here. That’s been the normal for 20 years. Why did we ever expect anything to actually change? Please, pray for people like myself when the inevitable happens on Sunday.
Photo Credit: Peter Casey-Imagn Images | Peter Casey-Imagn Images