Plot in Football, Thanksgiving Edition: Raiders at Cowboys

As a companion to the recent post on why football is a special part of Thanksgiving for many sports fans, I’m going to explain some of the plot points of the three Thanksgiving day football games this year.

Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC

I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year.

Thanks and have a wonderful holiday,
Ezra Fischer

Oakland Raiders at Dallas Cowboys, 4:30 ET on CBS

Cowboys Raiders Football
The Raiders in black and silver play against the Cowboys in blue and silver

This is probably the weakest game of the three on Thanksgiving this year, which is good because, plopped right down in the late afternoon, it’s likely the most disruptive to every single non-football related element of your Thanksgiving celebration. This doesn’t meant that there aren’t compelling stories surrounding the game, nor that the sports fans in your life won’t be compelled to watch it. Here are some of the plot points for this game.

The first thing to understand is that everything about the Dallas Cowboys is a big deal. The Cowboys are the most popular, most profitable team in the NFL. According to Wikipedia, they have an estimated value of $2.1 billion and annual revenue around $269 million. Their nickname is “America’s team” which, beloved as they are by their fan-base, makes virtually every other football fan seethe. They are simultaneously the most loved and the most hated team.

The Raiders are an almost perfect foil for them plot-wise. As hated as the Cowboys are, they think of themselves as wearing the white hat. The Raiders don’t just pride themselves on wearing black hats, they like to think they have black souls. For most of their history, the Raiders took their cues from now deceased owner Al Davis. Davis was famously antagonistic. He sued several cities in California as he moved the team from one to another. He sided with another football league in an anti-trust suit against the NFL. His imprint was seen on the style the Raiders favored which was aggressive on offense and especially on defense. Chuck Klosterman wrote a wonderful obituary of Davis in which he describe him as “a hard man — a genius contrarian who seemed intent on outliving all his enemies in order to irrefutably prove his ideas were right.”

Unfortunately, neither team is that good this year. The Raiders are 4-7 and have almost no hope of a playoff spot. The Cowboys are 6-5 and because the rest of their division hasn’t been very good either, tied for first place in their division. The Cowboys are much more talented than the Raiders and should absolutely win this game but, like the Lions from the first game of the day, are known for being consistently unpredictable. More than that, they are known specifically for losing games in embarrassing ways. The Cowboys quarterback, Tony Romo, takes most of the criticism for this. If it is a close game, listen for the fans in the room to start talking about how Romo “always messes up at the last-minute to lose the game” or how he “just isn’t clutch.”

We’ll see what happens when they play!

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