FORT WORTH, Texas — Excuse me for remembering, but a few weeks ago the Dallas Cowboys—America’s most feared team—scored exactly one touchdown against both the Packers and Redskins.

More recently, the World’s Hottest Super Bowl Contenders lost back-to-back games against the Giants and Chargers.
Yes, I saw the Cowboys beat the heretofore unbeaten Saints in New Orleans last Saturday night. Who couldn’t help but be impressed?
But in the NFL, talk and good looks can only get a team so far. The Cowboys have won games in December before — 16, in fact, over the past 10 years.
To get, however, where they want to go, the Cowboys are going to have to do more. They’re going to have to finish the job. They’re going to have to beat the Redskins in Washington on Sunday and follow that with a season-ending victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Not a problem, you say?
Wins over the Redskins and Eagles would complete a three-game Cowboys winning streak. They haven’t won three in a row in December since 1993, Jimmy Johnson’s final season.
Those nagging factoids aren’t the handiwork of a troublemaking media. The stats came straight from the Cowboys’ media guide, a far more sobering source than an optimistic new linebacker and a sunshine-whistling head coach.
“This was a big one,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said after his team’s 24-17 victory in New Orleans. “It could be the one to blast us off into the playoffs and beyond. There’s no doubt it was probably a season-defining and destiny-defining win.”
Whoa, there, Jerry. Tap the brakes on that rocket ship.
If they lose at Washington on Sunday night—stranger things have happened—the Cowboys aren’t going anywhere.
I don’t know how Jones or anybody can call the win in New Orleans “defining” when the fact remains that this team has lost two of its last three games.
Against the Saints, the Cowboys probably played their best game in three seasons. And the Saints played their worst game of the year.
At his news conference Monday, Saints coach Sean Payton talked about the defeat in practical terms—missed blocks, poor coaching adjustments, tangled feet and turnovers by a team that had mostly escaped such problems all season.
More than that, though, the Saints played Saturday like an injured team that was more than willing to shed the burden of an undefeated season. The Cowboys, on the other hand, played as if their entire season depended on the outcome.
In the NFL, that emotional gap is usually telling.
The last five Super Bowl champions have all lost games in December. The Cowboys’ victory was one game, and it likely changes nothing unless they can win their final two. In the meantime, the Saints can still clinch home-field advantage throughout the playoffs by winning just one more game. So what did the weekend really tell us?
No problems ahead for the Cowboys in Washington?
Over the past 13 seasons, the Cowboys have won only three NFC East games on the road in December.
At least the Cowboys won’t go into the final two games with the dark cloud of a slumping kicker hanging over their heads. Shaun Suisham, a familiar face from his first tour of duty with the Cowboys, will take over the kicking chores from Nick Folk.
Why place-kickers suddenly lose their aim remains mostly a mystery. In Folk’s case, the lingering effects of off-season hip surgery probably cost him his job.
There is never a good time to replace a field-goal kicker, and December only magnifies the importance of each kick.
Some Cowboys fans grumbled Tuesday about Payton playing a little gamesmanship and not cutting 21-year veteran kicker John Carney until after the Cowboys had signed Suisham. The move, though, is no more devious than the Cowboys bringing in cornerback Chris McAlister for a tryout last week, after McAlister had just spent two weeks with the Saints.
All is fair in December. The Cowboys are going to need every weapon over these final weeks.
Contrary to what the owner said, what happened in New Orleans is probably going to stay in New Orleans.
Unless we see that rarest of rarities—a Cowboys’ December winning streak.
That’s what defines a season, not the flush of one game after losing two.