There's nothing worse than the bye week.
The rhythms of your week get completely thrown off by its unwelcome arrival. Usually you celebrate/mourn on Monday and Tuesday, turn the page on Wednesday and then spend the rest of the week firing yourself up for Sunday. That's the way things should be this time of year and the bye week just screws it all up by forcing you to spend extra time with your family come Sunday.
This year's bye week is even worse. Usually the bye week is only a bad thing for the fans while the team benefits from some time away from the game. This year? Not so much.
The Cowboys and Tony Romo, in particular, have had to spend an entire week hearing about the meltdown against the Lions. The week after the Jets loss was bad, but by Thursday all anyone was talking about was the 49ers and the need to bounce back. The lack of anything to look forward to this weekend means that people just keep going back to the well over and over again, making it impossible to create some distance between the team and the loss.
Whenever something doesn't go your way, be it in football or life, the worst thing to do is sit and wallow in the misery. You've got to get up and do something, anything to get your mind in a place to move forward and, for the Cowboys, that simply isn't an option this week. That second half just plays out over and over again without any way to step in and stop the reel.
When they finally do get to play another game, it might not offer much relief. The Patriots will be waiting for them when Week Six finally gets here and that could well mean the Cowboys face a span of three weeks without a win before they get an easier date with the Rams. That's a lot of negativity in a short amount of time, so much that you'd almost rather have the Pats on Sunday to get the loss, assuming it is a loss, out of the way.
It must be said that the bye week does offer the team a chance to get healthier. That's never a bad thing, but you have to wonder if it will result in a net gain after the psychic beating the team has taken since Sunday. We'll have to wait a bit longer to find out, but this feels like the worst bye week in the long, terrible history of bye weeks.
