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As expected, the Cowboys writers for Dallas’s’s’s’s’s two major newspapers are pretty much taking the same perspective: Panic. Not only did they lose to the Eagles, at home, on Thanksgiving, but they lost their first place (tied) spot in the division. Among the analysts there is some rational breakdown, but there’s a lot of doomsday panic.

From Gil Lebreton’s “As they boasted, Eagles own the Cowboys“:

Who owns the Dallas Cowboys?

Is this a trick question?

On Thursday, it was plain to see that the Philadelphia Eagles, emphatic 33-10 winners, owned the Cowboys. LeSean McCoy, who brashly made that original boast in training camp, owned them. Mark Sanchez, the less-heralded of the day’s starting quarterbacks, owned them. The Philadelphia defense, ranked no better than 26th in the NFL, owned them. The brief week between games owned them. The lingering jet lag from London owned them. Missing a good spot in line for the Black Friday sales owned them. Have we left out any more excuses?

Oh, right. Tony Romo got owned by the Eagles.

From Tim Cowlishaw, of Around the Horn semi-fame, at the Dallas Morning News, “Cowboys’ defense shredded; playoffs in doubt“:

It definitely was the Cowboys on Thursday, and you have to wonder if this defense will be overmatched in every game until the season finale in Washington, which, come to think of it, looms as a somehow scary rematch with Colt McCoy.

Yes, the Cowboys are 8-4, and everyone would have taken that record heading into December in a heartbeat three months ago. But are the Cowboys also in danger of missing the playoffs?

Absolutely.

Talk radio host Bob Sturm is surprisingly one of the more panic-free analysts:

“It absolutely doesn’t feel great what we saw today. I absolutely believed the Cowboys were on equal footing with the Eagles. The tiebreaker had to be a quarterback that was going to be the best on the field. When you enter a game thinking you have a reasonable advantage at a position over a rival and you’re playing at home, to then find yourself humbled across the board, that’s quite disconcerting. I don’t know if there should be full panic.”

Name champion of the Cowboys writers, Rainer Sabin, has one of the better complete paragraphs:

The end of the game coincided with the grisly death of the quarterback’s 38-game passing touchdown streak. His punctuation mark on a wretched performance? Fittingly, it was an interception — one of two he threw during a day when he was the face of an overmatched team.

The Morning News’ Rick Gosselin was the first (and only?) to feel the need to mention Pitbull:

Pitbull was there. Lee Ann Womack was there. So was a very partisan home crowd 91,379, the largest of the season at AT&T Stadium.

Everyone showed up Thursday to see what Cowboys owner Jerry Jones called the biggest Thanksgiving game in his memory.

Everyone was there, that is, except the vaunted Cowboys’ offense.

Oh Rick, didn’t you also notice that the Cowboys’ special teams and defense were absent as well? But at least they had Pitbull. If things go the Cowboys’ way next week (and the Seahawks way here) and then the Eagles drop it to the Cowboys at the Linc, this whole situation will be reversed. But for right now, it’s a long holiday weekend, so pointing and laughing is totally acceptable.