Trav's Thoughts

New England really does make that opening drive look easy. Dallas made some good defensive plays, and Brady threw some really bad passes. But NE gets scores on the opening drive of the game - they've done it in each game this season and are the only team to do so this season. And they have scored first in each game this season. So the Cowboys are in a hole early.

So far Dallas looks like they didn't bother to study any film of NE. Or if they did study, they couldn't figure out what they were seeing. The Patriots are very good. But they can be had...they aren't perfect and they will make mistakes...you just have to find the weakness and have the talent on your football team to exploit it. In my opinion, NE is the best in the league at hiding the weakness.

We could get bored pretty fast with this game.

Jump the short pass route, a strong pass rush, a forced fumble, a defensive TD. Dallas gets those things and turns the momentum just a bit. Of course, the only way to keep that momentum is to stop the Patriots on the next drive. But the Cowboys are unable to do so and give up another TD on a long drive.

Wooooooooooooooo!!! The Raiders get an interception return for a TD against San Diego!!! Too bad they couldn't get much else done. Oh well. They were on top of the AFC West for a week.

Dallas does a tremendous job in the 2-minute offense to get a TD at the end of the half. The TD pass was on a sell out blitz. The offensive line picked it up, and at that point the secondary is pretty much helpless against the crossing route.

New England calmly dominated the second half. They do make it look easy. Even when Dallas briefly took the lead, NE simply took the ball and drove down for a go ahead score.

So now the Cowboys have their benchmark game. If they are going to be the best in the NFC, then it's either this outstanding Patriot team that will be their reward in the Super Bowl, or an equally excellent Indianapolis team. Of course, that's barring any kind of catastrophic injury.

The big show down now is Nov 4 at Indy. If should work out as a battle of the last two unbeaten teams in the league, NE and the Colts. Could the winner run the table and go 16-0?

That's it for my afternoon observations.