SPORTSDAY

Terence Newman said on ESPN recently that he thought the Cowboys were overconfident entering the playoffs and took the Giants for granted.

Tony Romo strongly disagrees with that line of thinking. His lengthy, interesting answer to a question about that subject is after the jump.

Linebacker Kevin Burnett talks about what cost the Dallas Cowboys a victory in their last playoff game on our Cowboys Insider blog.

Is it easy for the Cowboys to rehash their 21-17 playoff defeat to the Giants? Nope. But it can be beneficial.

Tony Romo prefers to look at the tape from an analytical perspective, studying it as he would any other game and looking for ways to improve on the way he played. The hope is he finds tweaks he can make in there. And avoid agonizing.

"You always think about that stuff," Romo told us yesterday. "You watch it to get better. But you don't think about (the pain) at this point, where you scrutinize it more than you did at the time."

Patrick Crayton took a lot of heat for a critical third-quarter drop in the game, a potential catch which would've converted a third down and, quite possibly, set up a touchdown that would've made all the difference. He hasn't forgotten it. Nor is he trying to.

Asked if he still thinks about it, he said, "Probably about twice a week, out at the complex. You know, we throw twice a week. Every time we do that, it pops in my head."

In his Sunday notes column, the New York Daily News' pre-eminent Morning News alum, Gary Myers, gives the Giants' four playoff victims a forum to speak about their postseason losses.

Cowboys coach Wade Phillips lamented that perception at the time -- that New York wasn't that good -- conflicted with the reality of the situation.

"Right now, it's easier to say we had a good season," says Phillips. "At the time we lost, certainly everybody said, 'Well, the Giants aren't a very good football team and they came in and beat you.' But that didn't prove to be the case."

Did the Giants winning it all show winning in Dallas was no fluke?

"It proved they really were a good team and that we got beat by somebody that was the world champs," Phillips said. "We didn't lose to somebody and then they lose the next week."

The NFL tabled talks of re-seeding the playoffs today, which would call for ranking teams solely based on record for each conference's bracket, rather than placing division winners in the top four spots. So that got me thinking -- how would it have affected last year's playoffs? Here's how ...

NFC
1. Cowboys (13-3); Actual seed: 1
2. Packers (13-3); Actual seed: 2
3. Seahawks (10-6); Actual seed: 3
4. Giants (10-6); Actual seed: 5
5. Buccaneers (9-7); Actual seed: 4
6. Redskins (9-7); Actual seed: 6

AFC
1. Patriots (16-0); Actual seed: 1
2. Colts (13-3); Actual seed: 2
3. Chargers (11-5); Actual seed: 3
4. Jaguars (11-5); Actual seed: 5
5. Steelers (10-6); Actual seed: 4
6. Titans (10-6); Actual seed: 6

So in essence, all the re-seeding would've done this year -- if you go by the records -- is flip the venue of one wild-card playoff game, and both those were won by the visiting teams.

But the larger issue, which Giants owner John Mara brought up, was making Week 17 games relevant. The Buccaneers, for example, wouldn't have mailed in the last two weeks of the season in this scenario, since a home playoff game would've been at stake. Same goes for the Steelers, who slapped a stamp on their regular-season finale.

Either way, I think Mara should be applauded here. Too often, clubs officials get stung by something, and raise issues like this in reaction. Mara isn't doing that. His team just won the Super Bowl. No, it seems like, as is his nature, he's doing it for the good of the league.

After a solid month of comprehensive draft and free-agency coverage, it's time to get back to Cowboys Blog's bread and butter -- sensationalizing, then relaying trash talk from one NFL team to another.

The other night on NFL Network, the Giants had a party for the release of the NFL Films Super Bowl highlight video. And when asked what their strongest memory from the game was, most Giants picked a February moment, like the Helmet Catch, from Arizona.

Not Amani Toomer.

"I remember beating the Cowboys," Toomer said. "They're the only real rival we played all year. They beat us twice earlier in the year, and they were really disrespecting us with what they were saying and doing during the week leading up to it. It was just great. Great revenge. Great revenge."

Funny. I kinda remember things being like Toomer said they were in January, only the exact opposite.

The Giants and Patriots aren't new franchises to this Super Bowl stage. In fact, each of them moved up another notch on the appearances list.

Yes, the Cowboys are still on top. Here's how they rank:

Eight appearances
Dallas Cowboys (5-3)
Six appearances
Denver Broncos (2-4)
New England Patriots (3-2)
Pittsburgh Steelers (5-1)
Five appearances
Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders (3-2)
Miami Dolphins (2-3)
San Francisco 49ers (5-0)
Washington Redskins (3-2)
Four appearances
Buffalo Bills (0-4)
Green Bay Packers (3-1)
Minnesota Vikings (0-4)
New York Giants (2-1)

In case you're wondering, there are six teams left that haven't made a Super Bowl: Browns, Cardinals, Saints, Jaguars, Lions and Texans. That's particularly ugly for the Cardinals and Lions, the two teams that have been in existance throughout the Super Bowl Era (Saints' first year was the season of Super Bowl II; The Browns had the three "years off").

CORRECTION: I had the Lions down twice and left the Saints out originally. My dad and his entire side of my family's from Detroit, so I'm sure they appreciate it.

Toomer's sideline grab looks like a catch to me. He got both toes in and he held onto the ball. But that's after watching one replay. So, let's see if Fox gives us a few different looks.
But on first glance, it's a catch.

Nice play by Donald Driver getting free from Corey Webster. But the Giants had no deep help and that allowed Driver to run free down the sideline.

Pack, 7, Giants 6. We got a ball game, folks.

I've noticed the kickoffs in both conference championship games have been a little short. I wonder if that's the weather. A cold ball is probably harder to kick.

The Giants have done a good job with the play calling on offense and defense to take a nice 6-0 lead on the Packers. Plax Burress and Eli Manning have been a good 1-2 punch.

Heard on the tele that the heated benches are cold on the Giants sidelines. That's bad, bad, bad.

Just got a text message from JJT and he said the wind chill in Green Bay is 17 below. I told him it's about 74 degrees in my house.

He didn't send me a happy response back.

Is it time for Billy V?

I'm not sure, but that third down pass by Rivers had nothing on it because he has one leg. He can't push off his legs to complete throws on a consistent basis.

Chargers defense can only do so much right now.

Antonio Gates just went to the locker room. Not good for an already banged up team.

Timmy Tabloid, I too picked the Chargers to win the Super Bowl before the season. Was the only one in the Boston Herald predictions to do that, too.

Unlike you, I'm willing to do some revising. And I'll also take a mulligan on picking the Cowboys to win the NFC, another ill-fated prognostication that ran in those Herald pages.

Three matchups to watch in the NFC Championship Game:

Giants SE Plaxico Bureess vs. Packers RCB Charles Woodson: A lot of the underneath work that Eli Manning did to move the chains won’t be there in Green Bay, with the Packers DBs playing up to the line and re-routing receivers. That puts the onus on Burress to make the Packers pay down the field.

Packers RT Mark Tauscher vs. Giants LDE Michael Strahan: The Packers figure to test the depleted Giants secondary by spreading it out with four- and five-receiver sets. If Strahan and Osi Umenyiora can win matchups on the edge, that will force Green Bay out of these sets. Also, don’t be surprised to see Strahan dropping into coverage to take away the slant in zone-blitz situations.

Packers RB Ryan Grant vs. Giants MLB Antonio Pierce: It will be on Pierce to play discipline, and not allow himself to be influenced in one direction or the other by the Packers zone blocking. He will be the key to closing off the cutback lanes that Grant has used to gash overpursuing defenses.

Three matchups to watch in the AFC Championship Game:

Patriots WR Randy Moss vs. Chargers CB Antonio Cromartie: I’d expect that the Patriots will move Moss around to get matchups for him. Physically, there’s not another corner in the league that sizes up with him better than Cromartie. It’ll be interesting to see if the Chargers lock Cromartie on to Moss. If the Charger star can slow down “The Other 81”, San Diego can then bracket Wes Welker.

Chargers C Nick Hardwick vs. Patriots NT Vince Wilfork: The key to everything the Patriots do defensively is Wilfork, a space-eating, double-team-demanding force in the middle. If Hardwick can handle him, the Chargers may be able to get LaDainian Tomlinson’s lead blockes, Lorenzo Neal and Andrew Pinnock, isolated on the Patriots inside linebackers at the second level.

Chargers SE Vincent Jackson vs. Patriots CB Ellis Hobbs: Jackson has an enormous size advantage, and this is one that the Chargers tried to take advantage of – and could’ve early if Philip Rivers threw a better deep ball – last year. Getting Jackson open underneath, with his understanding of how to post a corner up, could give the hobbled Rivers a chance to get rid of the ball quick and avoid getting hit.

Timmy Tabloid and I will be bringing it today from our respective couches. Plenty of knee-jerk reaction, sophomoric cage-rattling and instant analysis to come on both Patriots-Chargers and Packers-Giants.

I'll have my picks up in a little bit.

But for now, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. And the question isn't who you think will win. It's who you want to win.

I'd urge all of you to consider all factors. Who do you hate? What Super Bowl would you most like to see? And as nice a story as the Brett Favre Revival Tour has been, can you stand a storyline that would beaten into the ground more than "Jerome Bettis is from Detroit" was two years ago? Let us know.

While the Colts are seen as their chief rival, and the Jets feud has gotten a lot of hype (e.g. Mangini-Belichick, Parcells circa '96), the most heated donnybrooks the Patriots have gotten in to over the last few years may just be those with their combatant in tomorrow's AFC Championship Game.

There was LaDainian Tomlinson's comments earlier in the year. There was the Patriots' chest thumping after shocking a more talented San Diego team in the playoffs last winter. And then, there was the beginning.

Which brings us to why this is coming up on Cowboys Blog. The real seed of the unpleasantries between the teams was planted in Foxboro, Mass. on Oct. 2, 2005. That afternoon, the Chargers stomped the Patriots 41-17 and then high-stepped their way off the field, with no voice more distinct than that of Wade Phillips, then the San Diego DC.

"That's an ass-whuppin' right there," Phillips bellowed for all to hear as he entered the Gillette Stadium tunnel, something that was caught by then-Belo employee Tom Curran. Phillips' players followed suit.

If we'd only all listened to that soothsayer Michael Strahan. I'm watching NFL Replay, and they have pregame audio of the defensive end's impassioned speech to his teammates.

"Hey Fellas!" Strahan shouted. "Play loose, play hard, have fun -- I guarantee you we will win this (bleepin') game!"

Some people were a bit more relaxed. Like Tony Romo. Before Strahan broke into his rant, the NFL Films cameras caught Romo fraternizing with counterpart Eli Manning and, in the process, paying homage to his hero.

"You watch the games yesterday? The Snow Bowl up in Green Bay?" "Pretty good. I tell you what, Brett (Favre) throws the ball pretty good in that stuff."

I'm going to make sure to catch any post-game audio the good folks at Films have. Chances are it won't exactly be G-rated. And I'm willing to bet Brandon "Big Mouth" Jacobs is prominently involved.

Want to see that big Packers-Cowboys game at Texas Stadium this weekend? Well, we got your tickets right here, four of them side-by-side in the ninth row of the lower bowl.

Go ahead and bid on them. Or, if you want to be sure that you'll be there for the big one, you can click on the "Buy It Now" and get all four for the reasonable rate of $3999.99.

There probably is something we should tell you first ... What the heck -- Act Now!

It appears the weather conditions will be very Packers-like for Sunday's NFC title game.

Not sure if it qualifies as Ice Bowl II, but check out this frigid forecast, courtesy of the Green-Bay Press-Gazette.

Wade Phillips usually goes out of his way to defend his players. That wasn't the case with Patrick Crayton yesterday.

"If Patrick wouldn't have slowed down, it would have been a touchdown," Phillips said, referring to throw to Crayton in end zone in the final minute of the loss to the Giants.

Crayton acknowledged yesterday that his hesitation could have been the difference between playoff failure and preparing for the NFC championship game. He elaborated on the play during an appearance on Michael Irvin's ESPN 103.3 show today.

Crayton said his route was supposed to be a 16-yard out, but he was surprised that he was able to blow by the cornerback so easily. He hesitated while deciding whether to adjust his route to continue running vertical, which is obviously what Tony Romo expected.

"I got on top of him [and] I was like, 'Should I break out and let him sit underneath, or should I just go ahead and go?'" Crayton said. "That slight hesitation cost me that extra yard I probably needed."

I haven't put on a helmet and shoulder pads since my senior year in high school, but I might be partially to blame for the Cowboys' playoff loss if you follow Bradie James' logic. From Calvin "Lucky" Watkins' story:

Inside linebacker Bradie James said he thought some of the stories about the team leading up to Sunday's game were a distraction. He took exception with what he considered negative portrayals of quarterback Tony Romo's two-day trip to Cabo San Lucas with teammates Jason Witten and Bobby Carpenter.

"It's up to you guys to sell papers and do those other things and be negative," James said. "I thought from a media standpoint, we had a lot of local guys who were going against us, and we didn't understand that."

It was an interesting admission from James, considering players rarely comment publicly what they read or watch on the media. James was asked if his teammates failed to block out distractions.

"Yeah, evidently," he said. "We could have done a better job, really. It doesn't really matter what was said before the game. It's about the game and getting out there and performing."

I'll give James, who has always been a class act, the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was just blowing off steam. After all, if negative media affected a team, the Giants would never win a game.

Superstar columnist Jacques "The Ripper" Taylor pulled no punches in this morning's paper. Here's how his column started:

IRVING – This loss represents abject failure.

End of discussion.

So don't waste time trying to sugarcoat it. Or rationalize it.

The Cowboys don't want to call their season a failure. They prefer the term "disappointment." Greg Ellis went so far as to call the premature playoff exit the biggest disappointment in his 10-year career.

"We wasted a good opportunity with a lot of talent on one team to go out and get it done," Ellis said as the Cowboys packed up their belongings at Valley Ranch today. "We didn't do it."

Reckon we shouldn't be too shocked by the Cowboys' premature playoff exit. After all, this team didn't play well all December.

They finished the regular season 13-3, as we were told repeatedly, but the Cowboys last looked like a Super Bowl contender when Green Bay came to town in November. They ended the regular season with an absolutely pathetic performance against a Redskins squad fighting for a playoff berth.

The Cowboys fessed up to being uninspired that day. They had the NFC's top seed all wrapped up, so what did they care? They'd be able to flip the switch come playoff time. No worries.

Too bad the Cowboys played today a lot like they did the last month.

"We played with no emotion – the same way we did in Washington," CB Terence Newman said. "Everybody knows you can't flip the switch."

If they didn't know before, they learned that lesson today.

Wade Phillips is now 0-4 as a playoff head coach. And tonight's loss debunked just about every theory he presented before for being lackluster after the regular season: Be it playing away from home or being the victim of some miracle.

In a way, all that hard luck made the coach endearing to the players. They wanted to win for him today. And the fact that they didn't deliver for Phillips hurts as much as anything.

"I really feel sorry for him," Terence Newman said. "He wanted this a lot. He’s been coaching a long time. I wanted to help be a part of that."

The winner wasn't determined until Giants CB R.W. McQuarters picked off Tony Romo with nine ticks left on the clock. But the game's key series came in the final minute of the first half.

The Cowboys should have been puffing out their chests as they jogged into the locker room at halftime. They punched the Giants in the mouth on a 20-play, 90-yard touchdown drive to take a 14-7 lead.

But a secondary featuring three Pro Bowlers let Eli Manning and Co. march 71 yards in 36 seconds to tie it right back up.

"It changed the whole momentum of the game," CB Terence Newman said. "We just weren't in our key spots to make plays. They ended up getting a touchdown. I mean, you're playing at home. The biggest thing you've got to do is at least make them kick a field goal, if that. We gave up seven points."

Newman didn't point the finger at any of his teammates, but it was clear that Manning went after Jacques Reeves. Manning threw four passes in Reeves' direction on the drive, completing three for 52 yards (plus a 15-yard facemask penalty).

Reeves, an unrestricted free agent, might have played his last game for the Cowboys. Even if he didn't, the Cowboys would be wise to draft a cornerback with one of their two first-round picks. Kansas' Aqib Talib, a Richardson Berkner product, would look pretty good with a star on his helmet.