Everyone in the world believed with absolute certainty that a productive Roy Williams would make the Cowboys an unstoppable juggernaut. Never have so many been so wrong about something.
A pariah from the moment Jerry Jones traded away a big chunk of the team's future to bring him in from Detroit, Williams became an easy shorthand for Double J's inability to handle personnel with the mastery he shows when it comes to revenue generation. Never mind that his poor play didn't really hurt the Cowboys' record in 2009, Williams was irredemably bad and it was just a matter of time before Dez Bryant replaced him and brought Dallas to new heights.
Things haven't quite worked out that way and we actually find ourselves wondering just how bad things would look for the Cowboys this Monday if it wasn't for Williams. While the rest of the team has fallen flat on its face time and time again, Williams keeps putting up results that are justifying the belief that Double J had in him back in 2008. He's open every time Tony Romo looks his way, he's catching just about everything thrown in his direction and he's scored five times in the last three weeks.
Even more than that, he's one of the only Cowboys that seems capable of keeping his wits about him on and off the field. No asinine penalties like the ones Miles Austin picked up on Sunday -- "Stay away. Get away from me. Get away," Williams said. "Let’s not get any penalties. A high-five might be a penalty on us. Let’s just wait until we get to the sideline and then we can talk." -- or the ones that the rest of the team races to pick up as if those yellow flags came with a tasty candy center. For this team that would be more than enough to make a guy a saint, but the fact that he's also professional off the field makes him a truly unique player on the 2010 Cowboys.
Williams actually stands up and talks about what's going on with this team while so many of the other big names on the team just won't stand up. And unlike others who fall back on platitudes and make promises that continually go unfulfilled, Williams simply points out the obvious without excuses, rationales or anything else that tries to put lipstick on the piggish performances going on around him.
"We beat ourselves one more time," Williams said on Sunday. "How many times are we going to do it?"
How absurdly wrong has this Cowboys season gone that we're wishing that the team had more players like Roy Williams?
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