After 13 years with exactly zero playoff wins, many Cowboys fans may have felt the urge on Saturday night to dust off that Kool and the Gang album, put "Celebration" on loop, swill champagne and maybe even start a good ole' fashioned riot on the streets of downtown Dallas.
It certainly felt like an occasion suggestive of such behavior, which, more than anything, illustrates the insufferable duration and abject misery of the "playoff drought" in vivid detail. There was a time in Dallas, after all, when champagne and riots were reserved for Super Bowl wins. And apparently, at least as far as the Cowboys' locker room is concerned, they still are, to some degree.
The celebration in Dallas's locker room after the win was quite understated, so much so, in fact, that Dallas Morning News scribe Todd Archer was left "kind of surprised." But keeping with a season-long theme -- that the most important game is the next game -- Dallas wasted little time in looking ahead to Minnesota.
"I guess we look at it from two different eyes," said defensive end Marcus Spears. "I know a lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time around here, and I'm happy for the fans, I'm happy for the people that were waiting to get that first playoff win. But hopefully, they realize too that this is not where they wanted to end at, so that's our mindset."
Spears, hardly basking in premature glory, was not alone in this sentiment.
"Obviously, when you have a team like Minnesota staring you right in the face and you've got to go up there and play them in their...dome, that's a tough task for us," said linebacker Keith Brooking. "We're nowhere close to being satisfied."
