Part of the title of a Sports Illustrated preview of the Dallas Cowboys once read like this:

The talent is there to rule again . . ., but two straight late-season collapses make you wonder . . .

The deleted words would let you know that this article was from the August 30, 1999 issue and that Paul Zimmerman was talking about the upcoming season for Chan Gailey’s Cowboys as they prepared to begin the 1999 season. Gailey took over a squad that had quit playing for Barry Switzer in 1997, dropping the last five games to finish with a 6-10 record. The Cowboys initially responded to Gailey in 1998, going 8-0 in the NFC East and making the playoffs. However, as the SI article points out, most people were more concerned about the Cowboys’ play down the stretch than they were about the ten wins that season.

Dallas, playing passionless, uninspired football, lost to the Saints and the Chiefs and beat the hopeless Eagles by four, which clinched the division. In the playoffs Dallas put up another lackluster performance against the Cardinals and lost by 13.

The question now: Can you lay the whole sorry finish on injuries, or is the malaise much deeper, maybe a terminal case of late-seasonitis, remembering that the Cowboys lost their last five in ’97? “I honestly don’t know,” Aikman said early in August. “I think injuries were a part of it, but was that the entire reason? Every team I’ve been on goes through a period when the offense is struggling. Last year it came at the end of the year. Injuries threw us off our rhythm, and we never regained it.

“Before Chan got here, the team had to overcome a lot, like breakdowns within the organization. That made it tougher. Now the emphasis is on football, top to bottom. There’s a good group of people they brought in this year, through free agency and the draft. Let’s face it, we haven’t done a good job of that for the last four or five years.”

Ironic that Aikman was the color commentator for the season-ending loss to the Eagles, for the Cowboys as an organization, and the press as the faux-experts, and we as fans, still have no clue why the Cowboys fall apart down the stretch.

First, it was that the team quit playing for Switzer, which is what Aikman was referring to in his quote in 1999. Then, it was that Aikman just quit playing for Gailey, given that the two had a very strained relationship. Much like the 2008 Cowboys, the 1999 Cowboys started 3-0 but struggled with injuries and consistency in general for the rest of the season. That team finished 8-8, slipped into the playoffs by some miracle, but then lost badly to the Vikings.

At the least, both the 1998 and 1999 Cowboys teams won their season finales. That can’t be said for any of the teams this decade, whether the coach is Dave Campo, Bill Parcells, or Wade Phillips.

* * *

I know that few people share my opinion about firing Wade Phillips. At the same time, though, I am as mad as every other Cowboy fan. I took my eight-year-old son to watch the final game at Texas Stadium, only to see a bunch of heartless losers forget how to tackle. And I want very much to find someone to blame, whether it is Phillips, Jason Garrett, or Tony Romo.

But I am most sickened by the hopes introduced by false promises. I think firing Phillips and bringing in another big-name coach is going to be more about false promises than it is about the Cowboys really fixing what is wrong. Others hold out hope that the head coach really is the problem, and I hope they are right even if I think they are wrong.

Now if Jerry agrees to let a real football guy step in to run football operations . . .

* * *

In the SI article quoted above, there was an interesting stat listed. In 1998, Troy Aikman was sacked only nine times, and he was intercepted only five times. According to the note, no other quarterback since 1963 had been sacked or intercepted so infrequently. Aikman’s 1995 season ranked him second on the list.

Tony Romo is suffering through criticism because of his tendency to turn the ball over. Here is a comparison of the two quarterback based on this stat, using Aikman’s 1995 and 1998 numbers and using Romo’s 2007 and 2008 numbers:

Troy Aikman (1995): 432 passes, 14 times sacked, 31.9 dropbacks per sack, 7 interceptions, 61.7 passes per interception.

Troy Aikman (1999): 315 passes, 9 times sacked, 36.0 dropbacks per sack, 5 interceptions, 63.0 passes per interception.

Tony Romo (2007): 520 passes, 24 times sacked, 22.6 dropbacks per sack, 19 interceptions, 27.4 passes per interception.

Tony Romo (2008): 450 passes, 20 times sacked, 23.5 dropbacks per sack, 14 interceptions, 32.1 passes per interception.

The other impressive name on the list of the 1999 article is Dan Marino. On the other hand, the two other names are Erik Kramer and Steve Walsh, so maybe this is just playing with numbers.