Have Cowboys Been Reduced to This?

This is what happens when you are a Dallas Cowboy.

In the final quarter of a game against your bitter rival, you are covering the other team’s best receiver when he blocks you out of bounds.

You get mad, so you spit on him.

Four plays later, he retaliates by hammering your head with his forearm.

During a game-winning touchdown celebration.

A touchdown you helped cause.

This is what happens when you are a Dallas Cowboy.

The swagger doesn’t work. The attitude doesn’t play. Cheap shots cost.

When you are a Dallas Cowboy, a November loss to the San Francisco 49ers doesn’t end your week.

It ends your season.

Make no mistake about that blank look on the faces of America’s most expressive team when they wandered off the field at 3Com Park Sunday after blowing another late lead in a 17-10 loss to the 49ers.

It was one of resignation.

If many of them could quit and start again next year, they would.

Barry Switzer won’t, so he will be fired, and soon.

What happened to the dead-stalled Cowboys Sunday was precisely what has happened to them during their five losses in nine games this season.

It was typified in the above encounter between Cowboy defensive back Kevin Smith and 49er receiver Terrell Owens.

They used to be so good and so smart, they could win without ever opening their mouth.

Now they are neither.

Now they are merely desperate.

And, as with all things once proud, desperation does not become them.

There they were Sunday, making noise with the first drive of the game, 13 plays, the 49ers already reeling, when Aikman calls a “scat left” formation.

Dana Stubblefield runs untouched through the line, Aikman is sacked on third down, the Cowboys are knocked out of field goal range.

“Ten guys run a scat left, and one guy runs a scat right,” said tight end Scott Galbraith with disgust.

There they were again, threatening to take a seven-point lead in the third quarter, two chances to score from the one-yard line, and Sherman Williams is twice busted at the line of scrimmage.

Thirty-three times they have driven to the opponent’s 20-yard line or closer this year, and only 10 times have they scored touchdowns, the second worst percentage in the league.

“Third and a toe, and we can’t get it,” Michael Irvin said with disgust.

And there they were in the fourth quarter, still holding the three-point lead, when somebody named Toby Gowin shanks a punt from the end zone.

Two teams battling each other across acres for more than three hours, and the 49ers need only a 39-yard drive for the eventual game-winning touchdown.

Excuse me, but since when did anybody down there have to care about Toby Gowin?

Dallas optimists will say the Cowboys nearly beat the first-place 49ers at home.

Realists know that the 49ers aren’t that great, and this is another game the Cowboys should have won.

“We have some serious problems,” Galbraith said. “And they go far below the surface.”

But they start there.

This a team with no direction. Blame Switzer.

This is a team that, unlike the 49ers and Steve Young, does not have a quarterback who can adjust to varied or lesser talents. Blame Troy Aikman.

This is a team with a running back whose history of inflating his yardage with numerous, meaningless carries now haunts him with early aging and constant injuries. Blame Emmitt Smith.

And this is a team whose star receiver is still at his emotional peak when he is complaining about not getting the ball. Blame Irvin.

“Pressure makes winners focus, and losers fold,” Irvin said.

Early in the second quarter Sunday, there was no doubt into which category Irvin fell.

He was complaining so wildly about Aikman not noticing him running wide open, he walked off the field and missed the next play.

Indeed, Irvin was tripped and pushed on the goal line by Rod Woodson in the game’s final moments. And yes, the back judge could have kept his flag on the ground and called the penalty.

But it was also not surprising that the flag was picked up. In hundreds of games before this, that penalty is not called.

It could have gone either way. But the Cowboys have to think that with whiny Irvin involved, there was no doubt it would go against them.

And excuse me, but since when did anybody down there need a penalty to win a game.

This is what happens when you are a Dallas Cowboy.

You will get no breaks. You will find no sympathy. You will learn what it is like to be those you once disdained.

“They didn’t do anything . . . what did they do?” Kevin Smith said about the 49er offense after he was beaten by J.J. Stokes for a 29-yard reception just before the game-winning touchdown.

“They made once catch. One good catch. I congratulated the guy for the one good catch, but, other than that, what did they do?”

Oh, just shut up.