Skip Bayless Knew The Dallas Cowboys Would Win The NFC East This Year Except For When He Said They Would Go 6-10

Skip Bayless is a joke. He's a clown and should have no place in the sporting world with his ridiculous views and junior high debate class antics. He has no point of view or belief outside of whatever point of view or belief he thinks will get him the most attention. He's the 6th grader pulling girls' hair and pretending to fart in class solely for the basis of gaining attention for himself. Unfortunately, Skip is a grown 62-year old man and not in 6th grade. Skip thrives on attention, which means he can often contradict himself when he espouses two opposing viewpoints that both eventually lead to him getting attention. So Skip says the Cowboys are for real, just a few months after saying they were going 6-10. Life as a sportswriter must be fun and easy when you have no determined beliefs and can change your opinion as often as the wind blows.

You may not believe this, but Skip makes the Cowboys' hot start completely about him. I know, it's shocking that Skip brings the focus back on himself. 

Feel free to dismiss me as just another desperate Dallas Cowboys fan again falling for America's Tease.

I will feel free to dismiss you totally as another desperate attention-seeking troll who insists on playing the villain because it beats working hard for a living.

I talked my uncle, a high school football coach, into taking me to my first Cowboys game, at the Cotton Bowl on Nov. 5, 1961, when I was in fourth grade. Quarterback Eddie LeBaron's Cowboys lost to the St. Louis Cardinals 31-17 -- hey, Eddie Football was only 5 feet, 7 inches tall -- but I was hooked for life.

Great story, don't care. This isn't about you, it's about the Dallas Cowboys.

But I did manage to maintain objectivity in writing three books about America's Team -- three inside looks far too revealing for some fans.

What Skip may mean about "far too revealing" is he stated that Barry Switzer claimed Troy Aikman was gay, and Skip found no proof this was true and Aikman denied it, but Bayless included this in his third book on the Cowboys anyway because controversy equals book sales. A whore has to put out and a shill has to shill.

So maybe I'm not writing just with my heart when I say I believe in this Cowboys team more than any since the 1995 Super Bowl champion about which I wrote my last book.

Skip KNOWS the Cowboys are for real this year. He didn't know earlier during the summer, but he totally knows now.

This team is different from the many since then that have inspired predictions (and delusions) of grandeur.

You know how Skip knows this Cowboys team is different? They are winning games. It's a dead giveaway only he can notice.

This team -- if it stays reasonably healthy -- will win the NFC East.

Skip has to put that qualifier on there, just in case the need to backpedal at a furious speed should the need arise.

That's what I predicted on air on the Thursday this NFL season opened. My prediction so stunned and disgusted Stephen A. -- who grew up a Cowboys-hating New York Giants fan -- that he got up and walked off the set babbling about how I had lost my mind.

So dramatic! So scandalous! It's like the "Jerry Springer Show" for sports. Stephen A. had to walk away because Skip's view was so stunning. I'm so dismayed I couldn't view this circus first hand, but will have to settle for not watching it on YouTube.

He had no idea that was coming because I had spent the entire preseason saying this Cowboy team had 6-10 written all over it.

But you knew this team was different. You...you...you...are going all-in on the Cowboys winning the NFC East like you knew this would be happen, but your words didn't always back this prediction up. This is what is known as "flip-flopping" and having a contradictory opinion. Skip will get no credit for stating the Cowboys will win the NFC East because he said all preseason the Cowboys would go 6-10. He can't have it both ways. Now if the Cowboys suffer injuries (and I like how Skip throws in the qualifier that the Cowboys have to say "reasonably healthy" as if they hadn't been hit hard by injuries on defense before the season began), Skip can weasel out of this prediction and fall back on his "Dallas Cowboys will go 6-10" prediction. I'm sure there will be a gratuitous mention of Tim Tebow in there somewhere.

So why did I suddenly reverse field and book it that Dallas would go 10-6 and win the division?

Because you are a clown who holds no opinion which doesn't gain attention for yourself and you thought stating the Cowboys would go 10-6 was a good way of self-promotion?

It started two days earlier, during a round of golf, when a friend listened to my rant about how last year's historically bad Cowboy defense (which allowed an NFL-record 40 first downs at New Orleans) could be even worse without Sean Lee, DeMarcus Ware and Jason Hatcher.

Remember, Skip is working under the theory the Cowboys will win the NFC East if they stay reasonably healthy. So naturally, his conclusion the Cowboys will win the NFC East is reached based upon knowing the Cowboys most important defensive player is lost for the season.

My friend's response was so simply profound that I cold-topped my next shot: "You wonder if those guys will finally get so sick and tired of hearing how historically bad they are."

Wait, he was talking while you were putting? Or is Skip being overly-dramatic again like he was when he mentioned Stephen A. walking off the set so stunned by Skip's prediction the Cowboys would win the NFC East? I'm guessing the latter. Either way, this is how Skip Bayless works. Reason goes out the window for the sake of hot sports takes and attention-seeking comments.

Herm said: "Trust me on this: Rod will get them to play hard. If they don't" Herm's famed emotions rose. "... Rod WILL get in their face."

Oh, well I didn't know Rod Marinelli would get in his players' faces. That totally changes my opinion on the Cowboys. If I had known Marinelli would get in his players' faces in the same manner that helped him achieve a 10-38 lifetime heading coaching record in the NFL then I would have predicted the Cowboys to go 16-1. Yes, the Cowboys players would be so motivated by their coach yelling at them they would play an extra game during the season just so they could claim they won 16 games.

For the first time in forever, nobody was picking the Dallas Cowboys to do anything. At least, nobody I knew of...Seriously, you'd have to go back to 1989 and 1990, the first two expansion-like seasons of the Jimmy Johnson/Jerry Jones Cowboys, to find a year in which nobody thought the Cowboys had a chance.

So then Skip Bayless saw a void where he could troll and knew he had to fill that void. He can get attention, not by bashing the Cowboys as he had done all preseason, but predicting them to win the NFC East. Skip was going to differentiate himself by being positive about the Cowboys rather than negative, because that's how he could get attention. He would just ignore that he said they looked like a 6-10 team in the preseason, because who cares?

Leading up to this season, many of their own fans had given up on them. That's why, for the home opener, JerryWorld appeared to reporters to be half-filled with 49ers fans, and why during the home game against Houston, Texans fans made so much noise they forced Tony Romo to resort to a silent count.
At "HOME!"

The Cowboys were 3-1 when they faced the Texans. It seems kind of funny that Skip is using reasoning like Cowboys fans giving up on the team as the reason Texans fans made so much noise.

Perfect: Zero expectations for this Cowboy team.

Yeah, but Skip didn't know that Cowboys fans had given up on the team when he made the 10-6 prediction. That prediction came before the 49ers and Texans games. So he couldn't have known then the fans gave up on them and this wouldn't have affected his prediction. Seems like Skip is working hard to link a narrative to his trolling attempt at getting attention. He's taking information he knows now and tries to pretend he knew it before the season began when he could not have. That is unless Skip Bayless is omniscient or psychic. Obviously he is not. 

When I reminded Stephen A. that if Romo hadn't hurt his back in the big win at Washington, the Cowboys very possibly would've beaten Philadelphia in the 2013 regular-season finale at home and would've gone 6-0 in the division, Stephen A. reminded me they went 8-8. Again.

Well, it is all about you and conversations you have with Stephen A. Smith.

Yet ... even with that historically bad defense, in week 7 last year the Cowboys somehow held Chip Kelly's attack to three points in Philly, winning 17-3. Hmmm. Wasn't last year's near-flawless division record a quiet little building block toward winning this year's East?

Apparently you didn't think so, because you said the Cowboys looked like a 6-10 team during the preseason. Aren't all of these observations simply hindsight on your part? And focusing on one game where the Cowboys defense played badly with Demarcus Ware and Jason Hatcher doesn't explain how the "building block" game involved this same Cowboys defense giving up 31, 49, 31, 45, and 37 points after Week 7. This explanation for the Week 7 game being a "building block" makes not of sense.

I plunged. Eli Manning and Robert Griffin III had struggled through preseason games, and I was sure the Eagles would ultimately miss DeSean Jackson's deep speed, so I predicted the Dallas Cowboys would go 10-6 and win the division "by default."

That was as insanely bold as I could go.

But now that Skip sees he could end up being correct, he's doubling down and explaining why he believed all those things he didn't believe at the time which led to him making his prediction the Cowboys would go 10-6. This wasn't simple trolling on Skip's part, it was him knowing things that either (a) he couldn't know, like Cowboys fans had given up on the team or (b) claiming conclusions that don't make sense, like the Cowboys defense had a "building block" game in Week 7 of last year, while ignoring all the points the defense gave up after that week.

But it happened again, two Sundays later at St. Louis. Murray fumble, Romo pick-six: Rams, 21-0. Final score: Dallas, 34-31.

Last year, Dallas would've lost that game. Last year's Cowboys would've lost to Houston after blowing a 17-7 fourth-quarter lead and finding themselves in overtime. Dallas 20, Houston 17.

This was a resilient Cowboys team, which Skip knew when he made his prediction of the Cowboys winning the NFC East "by default." By the way, the Cowboys were tied with the Eagles for the NFC East lead when Skip wrote this, so they weren't even winning the NFC East as he had predicted and the Eagles do not miss DeSean Jackson's deep speed, as Skip predicted. Skip would rather we focus on his correct predictions though, while ignoring any prediction that may have been off-base a little bit.

This year's Cowboys keep facing down past demons. On a Sunday night last season in New Orleans, they suffered what I called "the biggest humiliation I can ever remember as a Cowboy fan" -- Saints, 49-17. On a Sunday night this season, they led the Saints 24-0 at half on the way to 38-17 retribution. Backbone. Then, at Seattle last Sunday, they basically recreated past nightmares up there -- blocked punt for a TD, fumbled punt, fumbled snap -- and bounced right back to bully the bullies in their backyard 30-23.

It's always fun how the conclusion here can't simply be, "The Cowboys are a good team who are getting a great year rushing the football from DeMarco Murray with a surprisingly good defense," there has to be a narrative running through all of these victories. They got retribution on the Saints, they were getting over past nightmares against the Seahawks. That's the narrative Skip wants to further.

Cowboy glitz has turned back into Cowboy guts. The primary architect of the new resolve: Marinelli, a far better coordinator than he was a head coach in Detroit. Same for play-caller Scott Linehan, who failed as a head coach in St. Louis. Bill Callahan had his moments as a head coach, but he just might be the NFL's best offensive line coach. Head coach Jason Garrett? Shaky play-caller but not a bad buffer between the team and frustrated coach Jerry Jones.

Everything is awesome now! Skip knew the Cowboys would bounce back this season because of these coaches, it's just he didn't know it earlier in the preseason when he thought the Cowboys, with these exact same coaches, looked like a 6-10 team. It turns out one of Skip's trolling attempts has turned out to be correct so far.

Skip is full of shit. He's very much full of shit. He's so full of shit that he's not actually full of shit, but he's just made of shit and it's overtaken his body to where all he is now is shit. Skip claims that the Week 7 game in 2013 was a turning point. Yet, on November 1, 2013 Skip Bayless wrote a column stating "Why Jerry Jones' team won't win." He made the following points (and I'll try to keep my comments to a minimum because you guys are smart enough to see the contradictions in his current position and his position less than a year ago after the "building block" game in Week 7):

That said, I've reached this painful conclusion: I'll be surprised if one of Jerry Jones' teams ever even comes close to winning another Super Bowl.

His Cowboys remain America's Team, in large part, because Cowboys lovers and the many, many Cowboys haters know that just when they start looking like a Super Bowl team, oh my god, did you see that?

The Cowboys fan in me is getting increasingly sick and tired of watching Jerry Jones enable his team to lose without fear. Super nice guys Romo, Jason Garrett, Jason Witten and DeMarcus Ware now lead the league in post-loss patience -- in handling tougher and tougher media questions with shrugging imperturbability -- because they aren't afraid of being held accountable by the owner. 

Who really cares? Jerry is still able to sell the illusion of hope because -- gusher luck! -- his team still leads the NFL's worst division at .500. But it isn't really based on quality. The Cowboys have lost to four over-.500 teams and beaten four under-.500 teams.

The Cowboys were 3-0 in the division at this point. They had their "building block" game that Skip didn't recognize as a "building block" game at the time.

And don't forget that Skip was on the Johnny Manziel train and wanted the Cowboys to trade Tony Romo to draft Manziel.

And this bullshit about the Cowboys winning the NFC East by default because the NFC East isn't strong? Well, that's typical bullshit from Skip because he was singing a different tune in May. From Skip:

“It says that the oddsmakers have little to no respect for next year’s NFC East, because the oddsmakers are saying that only one team in the East is even going to be slightly above .500 when all is said and done,” Bayless said. 

So the Cowboys would win the division "by default" at 10-6? But there's more...

“That would be the Eagles at around 9-7, and yet I think the oddsmakers at this moment … are overestimating Dallas to win eight games and go 8-8 again. I think that’s high. And I think the Redskins at about seven-and-a-half wins — projected — I think that’s low. Right now, if you backed me into a corner, I’m picking the Redskins to win the NFC East.

As if you needed proof that Skip was changing his position on the Cowboys. Remember, the Cowboys had Linehan, Callahan, and Marinelli on the coaching staff at this point. Also, remember that Skip moved the Cowboys up from 6-10 to 10-6 after a bad preseason, but then moved the Redskins down from 8 or more wins because of a bad preseason from Robert Griffin. So the preseason matters to Skip, unless the preseason doesn't matter at all to Skip. It depends on which way he wants to troll.

I think that will really help mold that defensive secondary and I like where they’re headed if RGIII is RGIII, and I believe with all my heart he will bounce completely back. So I have the Redskins winning 10 games next year.”

Smith also predicted the Cowboys will finish in last place and Bayless said he can’t see Dallas winning more than six games.

Boy, this is awkward. 

It's almost like all these things Skip claims he knew which would lead to success for the Cowboys during the 2014 season, the Cowboys having a "building block" game in Week 7 against the Eagles, the Cowboys having a good coaching staff and almost going 6-0 against the NFC East during the 2013, are things he knew prior to making the 6-10 prediction in May prior to the preseason. Yet, Skip still thought the Cowboys would win 6 games in May. That is, until he saw a chance to troll and differentiate himself from everyone else for the sake of gaining attention and claiming the Cowboys would win the NFC East. When it turned out Skip looked smart when the Cowboys started the season 5-1, but OF COURSE he knew the Cowboys would win the NFC East. Look at all these reasons on why his prediction was fact-based and not attention-based! Too bad reality doesn't match up with Skip's claims. Of course Skip isn't interested in reality, he is interested in attention.

Yep, Romo's offense leads the NFL in third-down conversions. Something also is different about Romo this season. Maybe he faced his NFL mortality for the first time. At 34, as he underwent his second back surgery, he had to suffer through owner/general manager Jones' painfully public fascination with Johnny Manziel -- and the regret Jones expressed over not drafting Manziel, sometimes within earshot of Romo.

Yes, Tony Romo is totally different now due to Jerry Jones' painful public fascination with Johnny Manziel. Remember when Jones said:

"If Texans would take Romo for Manziel, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Romo will tease w/ near-greatness then break your heart. Manziel=winner."

Ugh, that is a painful public fascination. I can't believe Jerry Jones said that. Wait, Jerry Jones didn't say that! That was Skip Bayless who said those words.

Maybe Romo is finally worried enough about losing his job that he's no longer treating it with shrugging carelessness.

Romo has a great running game and a defense that is stopping the opponent from scoring, so naturally this means Tony Romo has changed in some way. Narratives, people! Stick to the narratives! It all has to come back to how Romo has changed. Do not focus on how anything around Romo may have changed.

On third-and-8 in overtime against Houston, his spin-away heave was high and far enough that only power leaper Dez Bryant had a shot at coming down with it. And his third-and-20 escape at Seattle -- the NFL's play of the year so far -- was thrown where only Terrance Williams could snag it and toe-tap it in bounds.

Romo, finally matching his talent and toughness with ... maturity?

That's the narrative. Must stick to it. Romo, finally matching his talent with a good offensive line, good defense and an excellent running game? BORING! Let's talk about how Romo is more mature now. That'll get pageviews.

This team WILL last ... if Murray does. This man sets the backbone tone. Yet, while Cowboy great Emmitt Smith was the greatest I ever saw at avoiding injurious contact, Murray keeps attacking as if his offense and defense need his every punishing yard.

His history and logic would dictate that DeMarco Murray will not make it the entire 16 game schedule at this pace. Once/If Murray gets injured then the "It's the same Tony Romo who chokes in the clutch and is careless with the football" stories can start up again with no sense of irony.

Maybe underrated backup Joseph Randle will stay out of trouble long enough to give Murray just enough rest. Maybe the injury gods will smile on him. Maybe this season is just meant to be for the "historically bad defense" and the "accident waiting to happen" that has been Romo.

Maybe, but Skip certainly didn't think this was true prior to or during the preseason. Only when he saw the opportunity to troll and have a controversial hot sports take did he decide that the Cowboys would win the NFC East. For a guy who makes his living voicing his opinion, Skip's opinion should does fail to stay consistent or even seem to be based on the facts he claims his opinion is based upon when changing his opinion. It's always about attention to Skip.

And maybe I'm being set up for the biggest letdown of my Cowboy-loving life.

Maybe, it is after all completely about you. In your mind, it always will be. Skip Bayless is an embarrassment to AARP members everywhere.