Dallas Cowboys

Fuckin' Dez and fuckin' Tony in motherfuckin' Chicago Thursfuck.

After last night's drubbing of the Bears in Chicago, Dez Bryant had one simple request: that the assembled press not censor his post-game rant when the ran it the next day -- no "little stars," no nothing.

After waiting dutifully all day for someone, anyone, to heed this very important Cowboy's simple request, it appears we're once again going to have to play the role of town potty mouth. So here is Dez Bryant, after last night's game, speaking with the local media:

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Dallas Cowboys

Josh Brent

Josh Brent may have done his time for the December 2012 drunk driving wreck that killed his passenger, former University of Illinois teammate and best friend Jerry Brown Jr., but the legal battle surrounding the case isn't over. Brent's been sued by Beamers Private Club as it attempts to insulate itself from blame for Brown's death.

Brown's father, Jerry Brown Sr. sued Beamers in November 2013 for over-serving Brent on the night of the wreck. The club, Brown said, served Brent multiple bottles of Ace of Spades Champagne in its private room before the party broke up near 2 a.m. Because of Brent's size, he's listed at 6 feet 2 inches tall and 320 pounds in the Cowboys media guide, he would have drunk enough that a Beamers employee would have noticed him and the fact he was too drunk to drive home, he says.

This November, just as Brent was cleared to play by the NFL and put back on the Cowboys roster, he was named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Last Tuesday, the club filed a cross-complaint against Brent seeking that he cover all or part Beamers' cost should they be found liable for Brown's death.

The club says Brent's driving of his Mercedes the night Brown died was negligent, that he "drove at an excessive rate of speed, failed to control his speed, failed to drive within a
single lane of traffic, failed to timely apply his brakes and lost control of his vehicle."

The Texas UIL's system of determining high school athletic eligibility has meted out another dose of its strange justice. Gabrielle Gregory, a junior point guard at Irving MacArthur and a four-star recruit who's made a verbal commitment to Kansas State, has been sidelined for the first weeks of the season while awaiting a decision from the local district executive committee on whether she lives where she says she lives.

Gregory enrolled at MacArthur in January after spending two years at Triple A Academy, a Dallas charter with an uncommon concentration of basketball talent. According to her previous athletic participation form, Gregory and her mother, Tamika George, had recently moved from a small house in Dallas near Love Field into her aunt's apartment in Irving.

To be eligible to play basketball, Gregory and her mom had to prove that they had, in fact, moved to the Irving apartment as they claimed on their enrollment documents and that they hadn't done so for "athletic purposes." The first they accomplished by signing an affidavit swearing they lived with the aunt and then, when their residence in the apartment was called into question, causing Gregory to be pulled from school one month into the spring semester, by having mom's name added to the sister's lease. Proving the second, inasmuch as human motivation is complex and difficult to divine from outside a person's brain, is basically impossible.

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Monta Ellis, volume-scorer extraordinaire turned straw that stirs the Mavericks drink, hit a ridiculous spinning, off-balance fadeaway to beat the Bucks at the buzzer Wednesday night. Unfair Park thinks that's a thing you should see.

The celebration afterwards was almost as good as the shot itself, check out Mark Cuban and a suited-up Dirk getting in on the fun.

NBA via Youtube

Cubes on the left. Dirk top center.

@tedemrich

Hopefully this wasn't a sign of things to come.

The Cowboys have already lost the biggest game of their regular season. Thanksgiving's debacle, the 33-10 drubbing at the hands of the Eagles, has left the team needing to win out to ensure its spot in the playoffs, something that was unthinkable after the team's 6-1 start.

11-5 probably won't be good enough, at least for the Cowboys, because of their loss to the Redskins in week 8. That loss, combined with the one to the Eagles, leaves the Cowboys with two division losses. The Eagles have none, which means that even if the Cowboys can win in Philadelphia against a team that humiliated them, they will still lose the divisional tiebreaker should the teams finish with the same record.

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The 700 Level via Twitter

That'll teach me. After I praised the Cowboys offensive line for its best pass blocking display of 2014 Sunday against the Giants, that same offensive line, the one with three first-round picks and a growing reputation as one of the best position units in the league, laid a big, fat turkey egg on Thursday. On a day when Dallas finally needed Tony Romo to win a game, rather than just manage it, the o-line got smoked, early and repeatedly.

Thursday game exposed this Cowboys team's biggest vulnerability. When it can't run the ball, it can't win. After the Eagles went on one of the easier 80-yard touchdown drives you'll ever see to open the game, Dallas got three first downs on its opening possession but ended up punting. The Eagles quickly scored another touchdown and it became clear that this wasn't going to be a game in which the Cowboys controlled the clock, compressed the game and won despite their faults. No, this was going to be a game that got ugly quickly.

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Joe Mabel

The Texas Legislature, when it meets in January, will be grappling with very serious issues. Criminal justice reform, immigration, tax policy, transportation -- lawmakers will be making decisions that will shape the state's future for years to come.

State Representative Jason Villalba of Dallas, a rising Republican star who has mostly avoided right-wing demagoguery and established himself as serious-minded policymaker, is poised to emerge as a leader in the Texas House. You will be glad to know, then, that in the coming session Villalba will be using his position to tackle the most important issue of all: the freedom to carry beer wherever you damn well please at the American Airlines Center.

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First, a word about Odell Beckham Jr.'s second-quarter catch: It was the best catch I've ever seen happen in real time. I'm not sure if it was better than this Tyrone Prothro catch for Alabama against Southern Miss, but that was some magical stuff by ODB. I could watch that GIF again and again -- without guilt because the Cowboys pulled it out.

OK, now that that's out of my system, let's talk about what went right for the Cowboys in what turned out to be a really important win.

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Dallas Cowboys

Josh Brent in the 2012 preseason.

We did it you guys. The longest wait of every fall, the two weeks surrounding the Cowboys bye, are nearly over. The team sits at 7-3 having weathered, for now at least, a Tony Romo injury crisis, a defense that still isn't very good and Jerry Jones getting busted for doing some very Jerry Jones things.

Things look good, but with six games to play, making the playoffs -- much less winning in the playoffs -- is still a daunting proposition. Here's what I'll be looking at over the stretch run.

Jason Garrett's Management of Tony Romo
At this point, it's impossible to overstate Romo's importance to the Cowboys. Even in a diminished state, he provides the necessary threat to keep safeties out of the box. As the team heads into a Sunday when it will play the first of three games in 12 days, it is imperative that Garrett and his staff find a way to maximize Romo's contributions. Limiting his snaps against the terrible Giants on Sunday night would be the smart play, but it's not something that's likely to happen. Leaving Romo in the game after it's been decided, as Garrett did against the Jaguars, would be extraordinarily foolish.

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On Thursday, Christian Davis, far left, and Kristopher Martin, center, were ruled ineligible to play at Kimball this season.

It was never going to be easy for Kimball to win its fourth state basketball title in five years. The heart of last year's team, 6-foot-7-inch small forward D'Angelo Allen, was gone for University of Missouri. Gone, too, was longtime Kimball Coach Royce "Snoop" Johnson, who was fired in the wake of last spring's Dallas ISD athletics recruiting scandal, though not for recruiting but for tweeting something dumb.

It seemed, though, that longtime Kimball assistant Nick Smith was primed to pick up where Johnson had left off. Smith, after all, had studied under Johnson for years. He knew the kids, knew the system and his roster was stacked. Standout guard Jawun Evans, one of the area's top prospects, was returning for his senior season, and he was to be joined in the starting lineup by four other Division 1 recruits, a remarkable collection of talent on a public high school hoops team.

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