Heart of Matter Is That Cowboys Have Lost It

The Dallas Cowboys’ playoff chances vanished in a game befitting their season: a good start, a quick fade and a comeback that wasn’t nearly enough.

Now, for the first time since 1990, the Cowboys get to spend a winter wondering why they simply weren’t good enough.

Dallas dominated the first quarter Sunday, but Boomer Esiason threw two touchdown passes as the Cincinnati Bengals held on for a 31-24 victory after taking a 31-10 lead.

The Cowboys (6-9) let a 10-point first-quarter lead slip away. With it went their already slim chance of making the playoffs for a seventh consecutive year.

“This game was like our season,” safety Bill Bates said. “We fought our tails off, made too many mistakes and came up short.”

The Cowboys will finish with their first losing record since 1990, when they went 7-9. That season provided reason for optimism, another step forward in Jimmy Johnson’s rebuilding. This one has jeopardized the job of Coach Barry Switzer and left owner Jerry Jones contemplating changes.

“This is killing him as much as it’s killing us,” Bates said of Jones. “He’s going to find players and make changes to right the ship. That’s the only thing the players expect.”

No one expected the Cowboys to let the season slip away so easily. Dallas has lost four in a row for the first time since 1989, when quarterback Troy Aikman was a rookie and the team went 1-15.

“It’s redundant to stand up here and say the same things,” Aikman said. “You had two teams playing for pride and we just didn’t get it done.”

The Bengals (6-9) have won three of four since Esiason replaced Jeff Blake at quarterback, a meaningless surge after all playoff hopes were gone. Esiason threw touchdown passes of 48 and 32 yards to spark the comeback and completed 13 of 25 passes for 269 yards.

Corey Dillon, who had the NFL’s fifth-best rushing performance (246 yards) in the Bengals’ previous game, plowed through the once-proud Dallas defense for 127 yards in 26 carries.

Since opening the season with a 3-1 record, the Cowboys have lost eight of 11 in large part because their offense crumbled. It got rolling in the first quarter, holding the ball for 12:55 while its three stars played as if the postseason were on the line.

Emmitt Smith had 56 yards in nine carries, Michael Irvin made six catches for 69 yards, and Aikman completed eight of 13 passes for 83 yards as the Cowboys took a 10-0 lead.

“I just think that some of our guys were looking for autographs instead of playing football,” Esiason said. “I just told them to calm down and relax, make them realize that just because they had a star on their helmet doesn’t mean we couldn’t play with them.”

Once the quarter ended, the Cowboys unraveled. Smith, suffering from a stomach virus, left the field to get fluids intravenously and was not a factor again. He finished the game with 68 yards, giving him 1,034 for the season--his seventh in a row with more than 1,000 yards.