by Nick Eatman
“Sometimes the fans dehumanize these players they read about and see on TV and don’t realize they’re nineteen- and twenty-year-old kids with a mic in their face having to take tough questions from adults. But I always get really proud of the guys during a loss, and I was again after that game.”
Whether it was All-America offensive tackle Spencer Drango or Stidham or even Briles, all of them uttered the same four words in their respective press briefings.
“Control our own destiny” was a popular phrase following the game, and the Bears’ chances of winning at least a share of a third straight Big 12 title was obviously something about which the head coach had reminded his team in the locker room. With Oklahoma already losing once to Texas, Baylor could still finish 11–1 overall and 8–1 in the conference if the team won its next three games.
Controlling their own destiny and winning out would indeed give the Bears a piece of the Big 12 title, and perhaps could still put them in the discussion for the College Football Playoff, which included the top four ranked teams.
However, the road wouldn’t get any easier, as the Bears were now headed to a place where they had never won in seventy-six years. That would then be followed by a trip to their rival’s home field to face a squad that had nothing but revenge on its mind.
Games like this were just another example of Briles’ favorite saying in reference to programs that turn the proverbial corner from “hunters to the hunted.” For many years, Baylor was the team for which other schools felt sorry when they gave them 50-point beatings. Now, Oklahoma and its fans were parading around on the Bears’ home field, pounding their chests in victory.
And two more conference foes were ready to pile on for more punishment.
Sunday
The bittersweet feeling in Jason Garrett’s stomach during the Cowboys’ Wednesday afternoon practice was overwhelmingly noticeable to the head coach.
After experiencing six straight losses without his starting quarterback, Garrett more than welcomed the sight of Tony Romo back on the field again. He was practicing with the first-team unit, throwing passes to all the receivers while also leading the position drills and directing traffic as always.
That was the good news. The bad news for Garrett and the rest of the Cowboys organization—as well as the fan base, for that matter—was that Romo still wasn’t eligible to return to action. The NFL allows teams to place one player on an eight-week injured reserve list during each season, and Romo seemed an easy choice for the Cowboys after he broke his collarbone.
But the risks that came with moving him off the active roster and onto this list were for reasons just like this upcoming Tampa Bay game. Romo probably could’ve played, but since he had to sit out a full eight weeks, his return would have to wait.
And after losing six straight, the vibe surrounding this team was no matter who the quarterback was under center, if it wasn’t Romo leading the charge, the Cowboys couldn’t and wouldn’t win.
Even against the Buccaneers, with rookie Jameis Winston taking the snaps? Surely the Cowboys could figure out a way to get past a 3–5 Tampa Bay team that featured the NFL’s number-one overall pick at quarterback, although Winston still needed plenty of polishing midway through his first year.
For Dallas, the saving grace in this entire season was that no one in the NFC East was running away with the division. As bad as having a 2–6 record was, in reality the Cowboys never trailed any of their three division foes—the Giants, Eagles, or Redskins—by more than two games. And considering both wins to start the season were against NFC East opponents, the Cowboys still had a chance to sneak back in the race, especially if they could get some momentum going before they had to face their division rivals again.
At this point in the season, any win would do.
However, while the world was watching Dallas struggle on Sundays, especially in the fourth quarter of recent games, this team was fighting an uphill battle during the week as well.
The Cowboys didn’t have just Sunday problems, but rather a seven-day cycle of issues. And for the most part, repeat offenders were the cause.
For different reasons, of course, Greg Hardy and Dez Bryant remained the top storylines in the week leading up to the Buccaneers game. Once again, Hardy’s Twitter account was an issue, as he changed his bio in an attempt to declare his innocence in the domestic violence charges he had faced a year earlier. During the players’ day off on Monday, Hardy decided to change the bio page to read:
Innocent until proven guilty-lack of knowledge and information is just ignorance-the unjust/prejudicial treatment of diff categories of people is discrimination.
Call it a coincidence, but just a few hours later, the national website Deadspin.com, a sports site that has somewhat of a cult following for its mixture of hard-hitting reporting with an oftentimes humorous slant, released a 126-page transcript of the hearing Hardy had with the NFL in March. Five days earlier, the website had released a full gallery of photos that showed the defensive end’s former girlfriend, Nicole Holder, with severe bruises and cuts that she claimed were from Hardy.
By the end of the day, Hardy had removed his new Twitter bio, after yet another meeting with Garrett, who never reveals much of the details in what he calls “in-house matters.” Back in May, the head coach and the Cowboys’ support staff had its first issue with Hardy and his social media decisions when the defensive end made an insensitive reference to the “Twin Towers getting blown up,” referring to the September 11 terrorist attacks when responding to a fan’s tweet about Carolina Panthers’ wide receivers Kelvin Benjamin and Devin Funchess.
During the week, the Cowboys’ public relations staff did not make Hardy available for comment in an effort to diffuse the situation.
As for Bryant, he regularly makes his own decisions not to talk to reporters, but that doesn’t keep him from engaging in banter with the media. On this day, the receiver was looking for veteran ESPN columnist Jean-Jacques Taylor, who had been a longtime Cowboys beat reporter for The Dallas Morning News. Bryant was upset with Taylor for a column he wrote suggesting that the receiver’s two catches for twelve yards against Seattle two weeks earlier hadn’t come close to resembling a player who was given a $70 million contract.
In the NFL, that’s usually the easiest way to set off a player—publicly accuse him of being overpaid. So Bryant and Taylor, neither of whom is considered a locker room regular, had been looking for each other over the last week. When they finally talked, things got heated, and were then taken up several notches when wide receiver Devin Street walked into the fray and claimed that Taylor, who is African-American, used a racial slur against him, which Taylor profusely denied.
Sitting off to the side, an outside reporter who rarely visited Valley Ranch, was quietly observing. It was writer Robert Klemko of the website, The MMQB with Peter King, who quickly tweeted that “Dez Bryant just blew up on a reporter, went on a ten-minute rant.”
Only the real blowup was about to happen to the author of the tweet.
Having calmed down after his argument with Taylor, Bryant went back to his locker, where he went straight to Twitter. That’s when he noticed Klemko’s tweet and immediately yelled his name out in the locker room to come forward. When the writer did, the two had to be separated by some of Bryant’s teammates, and even Garrett made a rare appearance to try to calm the situation.
Bryant was so heated about what he felt was a one-sided tweet that painted him in a negative light that he yelled, “Don’t single me out like that. If you’re going to report something, report it right.” He then turned his anger toward the Cowboys’ PR staff, telling them to “Fix this shit!” Later in the day, he took to Twitter himself and offered up an explanation for his actions:
“Now I guess I’m the bad person??? The media comes in our locker room with no restrictions … I guess they can say whatever and it’s c
ool … let me remind all of you … WE ARE HUMANS AS WELL … WITH FAMILIES … we have to live with a lot of false talk about us … I chose to stand up for me and what I represent … I’m so sorry if a lot of you can’t handle being talked to direct.”
Needless to say, this losing streak was taking its toll on the team. While it might have been easy for outsiders to call it simply a six-game skid, the struggles were becoming a real issue inside the walls of Valley Ranch. Forget six games. How about fifty-three days? That’s how long it had been between the Cowboys’ last win and Bryant’s latest locker-room blowup.
When losing streaks get this bad, the negativity is felt daily, not just on game day.
The Cowboys arrived in Tampa Bay with hopes of ending their downward spiral and creating a little momentum around the team before Romo returned the next week in Miami. But the Saturday night before the game, not all the players seemed on board. At least they certainly didn’t all make the team meeting.
Hardy was a no-show for the defensive meeting at the hotel, which resulted in a fine, but not a suspension. He still started and had a solid game, although Fox TV cameras did catch him and fellow defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence having a heated verbal exchange on the sidelines. But those two were actually playing well for a unit that limited the Buccaneers to just a field goal for the first fifty-eight minutes of the game.
The problem was that Matt Cassel and the Cowboys’ offense could muster only six points. And that seemed to be enough after safety Jeff Heath’s second interception late in the fourth quarter. But on a crucial third-down play with a chance to perhaps seal the win, Bryant dropped a pass he normally catches, forcing Dallas to punt.
Clinging to a 6–3 lead, the Cowboys’ defense once again failed to close out a game, allowing Winston to drive the Bucs to a go-ahead touchdown in the final minute. Dallas had actually forced and recovered a fumble two plays earlier, but a holding call on Heath gave Tampa Bay another chance, which Winston used to score the game winner.
On the Cowboys’ final desperation drive, there was some hope when Cassel fired a deep ball to Bryant, who was streaking to the end zone against the Buccaneers’ man coverage. But a slight push in the back by the defender moved the receiver off his course, and safety Bradley McDougald came up with the interception to win the game. Bryant was criticized heavily, including by Fox color analyst John Lynch, for giving up on the route and not making more of a fight to get the ball with the game on the line. Bryant had a reputation for a guy who would win the ball in the air. On this play, however, he wasn’t even close.
And with that, the unthinkable came to an ugly reality. The Cowboys walked off the field while getting an earful of the cannons that were blasting from the life-size pirate ship in the end zone, knowing they had just completed seven straight games without their quarterback and couldn’t manage to win a single one. Brandon Weeden tried his hand and lost three straight starts. Cassel relieved him and had now lost four.
But they were both about to step aside—one more so than the other—as Romo was finally ready to return to action.
Chapter 13
ROAD WARRIORS
Friday
Not many towns in Texas have a richer or longer tradition of successful football, especially at the highest level, than Plano.
While the Wildcats have won seven state titles, Plano East has had some powerhouse teams as well, and Plano West has been a formidable program in its first ten years of existence.
Yet, after just one week of the 2015 state playoffs, none of the P-Town schools were still playing football.
With East losing in the first round, and the other two schools failing to even make it out of the lethal District 6–6A, the season had officially come to a close for the city of Plano.
For Matt Keys, the end was bittersweet. Obviously, he was disappointed that his team didn’t maintain the standards of Plano Senior High and make the playoffs, but the rollercoaster of his senior season was taxing. The hits certainly piled up over ten games.
Still undecided on where he would attend college, Keys wasn’t even sure what his next move would be for the rest of his senior year. A gifted athlete, he likely could’ve run track or played baseball. He also thought about just relaxing and taking it easy.
He never could’ve imagined what the next stage of his life would be. Keys had spent the last few months calling plays. Now, he was about to be in one.
About a week after the regular season ended, a couple of classmates from the theater department approached Keys in the hallway at school. At first he thought it was a joke, but he soon realized that they were serious in their attempts to get him to join the school’s next play, a production of the musical Legally Blonde.
While an initial thought of “football players and musicals don’t mix” ran though Keys’ mind, he was somewhat flattered that he was even considered for the part. After he declined at first, Keys kept thinking about it. What had piqued his interest were the words “small role,” as he would only have a couple of lines. The girls also told him he would only need to go to two rehearsals.
“Yeah, they lied to my face,” said Keys, who soon learned after he agreed to take the part that his role was not as trivial as he first thought. “It turned out to be one of the leading characters. I’d say probably the third-most prominent role. I was in four scenes and had to do a choreographed dance in the middle of the stage.”
He signed up to have a couple of lines, but ended up with nearly twenty-five as he was given the role of “Kyle,” who is described as a fit, handsome UPS driver. That description alone might have helped Keys warm up to the idea.
“In about a week, I had swapped a head coach for a director,” he joked. “At first I wanted it to be quiet. I didn’t want people to find out that I was doing it.”
Good luck with that. High school gossip has seemingly never taken too long to spread, and that was before texting and social media. Within two days, everyone knew Keys was in the play. And once he found out it could be beneficial for exposure and possibly ticket sales to tout the fact that the quarterback of the football team had a primary role, Keys didn’t hide from it any longer.
He also didn’t mind his friends jokingly calling him “Troy Bolton,” the lead character played by actor Zac Efron in High School Musical, a pop-cultural trilogy of movies about a star basketball player who, in similar fashion, joins the school’s play.
Not only did Keys start to warm up to the stage, but the rehearsals also gave him an opportunity to better know the people involved with the play. In addition to quarterbacking, Keys had run a Bible study for fellow players and classmates. He was also a member of the National Honor Society and Fellowship of Christian Athletes and was a part of the homecoming court. With just a couple of months to go in his senior year, he thought he knew everything there was to know about his school and peers.
“As it turned out, I think we learned a lot of lessons about judging people,” Keys said. “I have so much appreciation now for those kids in theater. They’re the most nonjudgmental and accepting people ever. They accepted me right away. I ended up having another locker room for a little bit.”
But on this team, he wasn’t the quarterback. No longer was he the one on whom everyone counted to save the day when the things got tough.
And after the season Keys had just endured, it was definitely a welcomed change.
Saturday
When it comes to rivalries, fans and the media typically play the biggest role in not only creating but also enhancing the drama between two teams. Usually, rivalries are simply geographical, pitting two of the state’s top programs against each other. Or it could be driven by a connection of the coach and his former university. Sometimes, rivalries are formed by the fact that the two teams simply play incredibly close games.
Regardless, for one reason or another, Baylor had now gained a few rival
s in the Big 12. From Texas Tech, a school where Art Briles had coached some fifteen years earlier, to the traditional state powers of Oklahoma and Texas, to the budding rivalry with TCU, the Bears and their fans had plenty of people to dislike, and vice versa.
But ask Briles and his coaches the same question about rivalries, and they’d answer it differently.
“Well, Oklahoma State is the team that has given us the most problems, especially up there,” Briles said. “I don’t know about all of that [rivalry] stuff. I just know the teams that have been hard for us to beat. That’s what we focus on.”
Since Briles and his staff had arrived in Waco, the Cowboys of OSU had been a thorn in their side, especially in Stillwater, where Baylor hadn’t won since 1939. The Bears had only defeated Oklahoma State twice in their last seven meetings overall.
And, their most recent trip up to Boone Pickens Stadium saw Baylor’s 2013 national championship bid come to an end after the Cowboys smashed the previously undefeated Bears, 49–17, in front of a national audience that was wondering at the time if the 9–0 Bears were legitimate title contenders.
Now, Baylor was getting a chance to return the favor.
After losing to Oklahoma in their previous game, the Bears had dropped to number ten in the latest playoff rankings, while Oklahoma State sat at number six with a perfect 10–0 record. The Cowboys knew if they could win their final two games—both at home against Baylor and Oklahoma—they would likely make the College Football Playoff as one of the four top-ranked teams in the country.
Once again, the world was watching as the two squared off in front of ABC’s national television audience.
“Our guys were extremely confident—all week in practice, the night before, and in pregame warm-ups. Just very confident,” said offensive coordinator, Kendal Briles. “For us having lost the last game to OU, and coming back on the road in a place we hadn’t won at, the guys just came out very confident and focused. We didn’t really have any pressure on us. Just go out there and perform.”