The second of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games this year is between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys at 12:30 p.m. on Fox. This game is the turkey. It’s the main dish, the Pièce de résistance, the FOOTBALL GAME in all capital letters. Like a Thanksgiving Turkey, it can be delicious — tasty and flowing with good football juices — but it’s also just a little overrated. I mean, it’s no coincidence that we, as a culture, basically eat turkey once a year.
Thanksgiving is the ultimate American holiday. Its focusses are family, food, and football. To celebrate the first two, it helps to know about the third. To that end, we’re offering a free copy of our Guide to Football for the Curious in addition to publishing previews about each of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games.
Plot
The Dallas Cowboys have the nickname “America’s Team,” which seems to engender more hatred than admiration. They do have an very big, national fanbase, but it seems like every other team’s fans hates their rivals first and the Cowboys second. That’s convenient for fans of the Philadelphia Eagles, who are specialists in sports hate of all kinds. The Dallas Cowboys are simultaneously the Eagles’ division rivals AND the Dallas Cowboys. That’s two times the hate for the price of one.
The Cowboys and Eagles enter this game tied for first place in their division with eight wins and three losses each. Both teams have succeeded in an unusual way — by running the football. The overall shift in football has been to pass more and run less but each of these teams has succeeded by running (literally) against the grain. The Cowboys do this by having a great offensive line and an excellent running back. The Eagles do this by having better designed running plays than anyone else. Not that the Eagles aren’t talented or that the Cowboys coaches haven’t built a good offense, but this game can easily be seen as a battle between great players (the Cowboys) and a great system (the Eagles.) One piece of evidence for this has been the ability of the Eagles to lose their starting quarterback and not miss a beat. When the Cowboys had to go without their starter for a game, they not only missed a beat, they got beat.
Characters
Tony Romo, Quarterback on the Dallas Cowboys
The quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys is one of the most visible and pressure packed jobs in sports. Tony Romo has had that job since 2006. His experience has been mixed. He’s been a very good quarterback but the team, during his career, has had no success in the playoffs whatsoever. The Cowboys have developed a reputation for failing at the most important and pressure packed moments and Romo has been a big part of that. The snap that Romo fumbled while trying to hold for a game winning playoff field goal in January 2007 (so harrowing was this play to the Cowboys fans that it’s still the subject of articles and counter-factual videos) was the beginning of Romo developing the reputation for not being a “clutch” player. His defenders note that he’s actually led lots of game winning drives but they say it with a defensive tone in their voices.
Dez Bryant, Wide Receiver on the Dallas Cowboys
Dez Bryant is the prototypical modern Wide Receiver. He’s big, strong, fast, powerful, and capable of making incredible catches. He also has a reputation for being a diva and for flying completely off the handle. He has a reputation for bad behavior on and off the field. It’s almost an annual tradition to see articles like this recent one from NFL.com with the headline, “Cowboys Concerned about Dez Bryant off the field”. These articles inspire defenses of Bryant, like this one from Cowboys site, Blogging The Boys, and also from less biased sources like Deadspin which ran an article contending that the “Dez Bryant Smear Season is Upon Us”. It’s hard to make any personal conclusions about players like Bryant because the information we get is biased by a combination of team allegiances, financial motives, and cultural, racial, and even positional stereotypes.
DeMarco Murray, Running Back on the Dallas Cowboys
As opposed to Dez Bryant, DeMarco Murray is an interesting figure because of his situation. Like Bryant, Murray is going to be an unrestricted free agent after this season. Like Bryant, Murray is one of the best in the world at his position. Unlike Bryant though, Murray plays Running Back, which is the most physically damaging position, and because of that, it has the shortest expected careers. Running back is now seen as an important position for winning football games but one where the athletes who play the position are interchangeable and expendable. Murray has played wonderfully this year, but he’s also been used more than he’s ever been used before. Some people wonder if the Cowboys are simply planning to use him up and then get rid of him at the end of the year.
Jerry Jones, Owner of the Dallas Cowboys
Most team owners would not be worth profiling but Jerry Jones is different. Jones is not only the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, he’s also the President and General Manager of the team. He takes a wide ranging and important role in almost all the football operations of the team. It’s common to see him down on the field, talking to players or coaches. He’s long been criticized for insufficiently delegating authority throughout his organization and much of the Cowboys’ lack of success has been blamed on him. That’s why there’s no one alive who is enjoying this year’s Cowboys season more than Jones. Jones is a charismatic powerful man, so it’s depressing but not surprising that along with compelling and complementary profiles of him there are also accusations of abuse.
Mark Sanchez, Quarterback on the Philadelphia Eagles
Mark Sanchez took over as the starting quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles at the start of November when incumbent starter, Nick Foles, broke his collarbone in a game. Sanchez was a highly regarded player when he was drafted fifth overall by the New York Jets in the first round of the 2009 draft. His time at the Jets started well with two consecutive successful years in the playoffs but was downhill from there. Things got laughably bad in his last year there, epitomized by the infamous “butt fumble” moment when he dropped the ball after running into one of his own teammates. His attempt to rehabilitate his career is off to a good start but he’s still the object of a disproportionate amount of scorn from fans and media.
Chip Kelly, Coach of the Philadelphia Eagles
People who write about football have a bad habit of overstating the brilliance of football coaches. Not every coach is a genius. In fact, for a sport that rewards innovation as much as football, it’s a surprisingly conservative profession. Most coaches design offenses that are just slightly different from what everyone else is doing. Not Chip Kelly. Kelly has long been a bit different. From his college coaching days in New Hampshire and Oregon to the Philadelphia Eagles, Kelly has been more aggressive and innovative than most coaches. He’s great at finding ways to use simple concepts to create open spaces for his players to run into. The simplicity of his offense plus some innovative play signaling grant his team the ability to run plays faster than any other team. He’s now leading the charge into using sleep and activity monitors to regulate, monitor, and customize every aspect of his players lives during the season. Creepy but effective.
Conner Barwin, Linebacker on the Philadelphia Eagles
Connor Barwin is one of the leaders of the Eagles defense. He plays the outside linebacker position where he has to tackle runners, cover receivers, and attack the quarterback often. He’s also one of the more unique characters in the NFL. At 6’4″, 264 lbs, Barwin may be one of the world’s biggest hipsters. He rides his bike to work, is a regular at music venues, and a proponent of marriage equality.
LeSean McCoy, Running Backs on the Philadelphia Eagles
One of the most fun things about the Eagles is how run-heavy their offense is, even in an era when running has become almost obsolete on most teams. The team’s primary running back is a perfect fit to benefit from Chip Kelly’s ability to create plays that give running backs room to beat defenders in the open field. LeSean McCoy, known as “shady” (a name his mom gave him as a baby due to his quickly changing moods), is the lead back. He’s got an almost unbelievable ability to change direction quickly which he retains, as we saw last year, in deep snow. He also hysterically says his own last name, “McCoy” as he runs by would-be-tacklers. The ESPN article on how he came to believe in coach Chip Kelly is a must read to understand him and Kelly.