First, it was the Hall-of-Fame game as seven players were honored. The inductees had to enjoy watching the game, as the Cowboys cruised to a 16-7 win. It also showed that Terrell Owens faced his old team and he said a bunch of other stuff that his release from the team was prematured. Adding to this, it also showed that the football season has finally started. It's finally here as people fight for spots on the team while others are ready for the regular season to just goddamn start already.
The Bengals honored the Hall-of-Famers by wearing gold shoes on a couple of plays. It seemed that Chad Ochocinco came up with the idea of the shiny-looking footwear. It was a question asked by many of why they wore gold shoes. But it was later answered by OchoCinco.
"That's exactly what it was, how did you know?" he said. "That's exactly why I did it."
Terrell Owens was asked if the team or just OchoCinco will be fined. Most probably, Chad will. I have a deep feeling that No. 85 will break the NFL record for the most league fines. Maybe he has already done it due to the many he had last season, too.
"Chad has so many different-colored shoes he is like a woman," Owens said.
The Bengals played sloppy, however, as they allowed eight sacks. The defensive inductees: Dick LeBeau, Rickey Jackson, and John Randle were happy to see the many takeaways, low-scoring and the recovered fumble by Cincinnati. Defense was the main reason to winning here. And as the saying goes: defense does in fact win championships. But this wasn't a championship. It was just the start for the first game of the season.
There were many penalties in the game. Along with that, there were 16 overall, most of them going to the favor of Cincinnati. This isn't really something to be happy about. They had twelve penalties for 90 yards. I just wish they had Hard Knocks for this season with the Bengals instead of the last season. No need to have the New York Jets here for this season. I mean, come on, you get to see OchoCinco and OchoUno show off their personalities. Along with that, they videotape Marvin Lewis's reaction after the game. Boy would he be pissed.
But this game was just the pre-season. However, Wade Phillips has a good saying about it, even though it is just the pre-season.
"The best thing about it," Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said, "is you see what you did and what you need to improve on."
Tony Romo led the Cowboys on a nice opening drive. He was completed five passes out of ten attempts and passed for 59 yards.
"You just have to continue to work on the things we've been doing through the offseason and in training camp," Romo said. "You're never sure until you get into a game-like mode, and some of the new stuff, it was nice to see it work out really well. It's a start. We have to build off of it, but we still have a ways to go, and we're on the way."
Team kicker David Buelher did most of the scoring in the game, hitting three out of four field goals. At least this was better than last year's kicker who missed a bunch of easy field goals. Rookie linebacker Brandon Sharpe had the only touchdown for Dallas, returning an interception for six points the other way. For the Bengals, their only touchdown was a one-yarder Darius Hill caught from third-stringer Jordan Palmer.
This NFL season looks to be fun.
Can't wait.
Let it begin!
