Dear Dallas fans,

As the second week of the NFL playoffs starts this weekend — games which your beloved team will not play in despite your ludicrous predictions — I otherwise hope this letter finds you well.

I sincerely hope the wounds you are licking from your embarrassing loss to the Packers don’t taste too much like moldy cheese.

I’ve never really had bad Wisconsin cheese but I’m sure right now it tastes like bile to you.

Oh, well, maybe that’s what you get each season for thinking this season is the year because some homer so-called expert licks the star on the helmet and predicts your team is going to the big game.

It becomes old after a while, it becomes obnoxious and frankly it becomes laughable.

I’ve learned to temper my expectations.

When you throw it in my face that “we dem boyz” beat Washington, which is my team, I look at you with sympathy because if you knew me you’d realize this year I expected nothing less, expected nothing less the year before and so on and so on back to the last time we won the Lombardi Trophy.

I don’t pout every time the Commanders lose. I’m not like Micah Parsons, who thinks every penalty against him is a bad call and pouts and whines about it, arguing with any official who will listen to him cry.

But it’s been bred in you for so long — that whole America’s Team hogwash. 

If you look at it from a historical perspective, but you won’t because you believe the hype tossed around about you each year, there could only be three possibilities for America’s Team — New England, Philly or Washington.

I’m not trying to go over your swollen heads with American History — I’m just trying to educate you a little. 

I’m sure you remember sometime back in school learning about New England’s significance in the American Revolution. I’m sure you understand that there was something adopted in Philadelphia that declared our independence from British rule. While Washington is currently playing in Maryland, I’m sure you know the significance of the entire DMV area and the role it plays in our nation.

In simple terms you might understand despite your ears having shrunk because your massive egos became deflated Sunday night: Howdy, pardner, you ain’t America's Team and never will be.

Take it from a longtime Washington fan: People might like you better if you’d get your egos in check each time some pundit says it’s your year. 

Lose that swagger and don’t expect each and every year to be your championship season — especially when you barely beat Detroit and lost two successive games — one against the Bills and one against the Dolphins.

We won’t even mention how Green Bay ran roughshod over you Sunday or again maybe we will, especially in that Spruce Goose of a stadium that Jerry Jones built for you, all part of that mentality that everything’s bigger — but in my estimation not necessarily better — in Texas jive.

You proved that a team with a 9-8 record and an up and coming quarterback could best your 12-5 record with supposedly a battle-tested QB, a supposedly elite WR and a supposedly unstoppable RB. 

But Aaron Jones ran over your vaunted defense like a steamroller.

And Dak, with his “here we go” snap count can only say now, “There we went — back home to watch the Super Bowl on TV.”

And please don’t say they could have come back. 

Green Bay played you soft at the end to avoid penalties. Despite the 16-point margin of victory, it was a colossal blowout and I feel your pain — but only somewhat because I’ve learned to temper my expectations.

I look back at your history, the terrible way you treated a coach even I respected — Tom Landry — to the hiring of TO, a man you forgot stomped on your beloved star — and I will never forget the Texas Monthly cover I saw that time of Michael Irvin with the cocaine mustache.

If Washington should ever find themselves in a position where they’re predicted to win it all, I’ll wait and smile. 

There’ll be a sense of self-satisfaction, perhaps a post to Facebook much the same way I did when the Blues finally got to hoist the Stanley Cup in ‘19.

But I’m sure none of you “Big D” fans will heed my sage advice and you’ll go about, chests puffed out, your blue and silver plumage clearly visible, only to tuck and cower when dem boyz choke again in the playoffs. 

Someone will take my wry jabs as derogatory like they did with my tongue in cheek marijuana is still illegal column, someone will say I’m a bad sport, someone will say I’m nothing but a hater. 

The one thing that is true is I am definitely a hater when it comes to the Dallas Cowboys and each year I drink gallons of the Haterade because I grow weary of your boasting year in and year out — full of sound and fury and signifying nothing since 1996.

But you know, I truly feel I’m saying something many are thinking and I’ll gladly take the heat as I watch the silent Texas tumbleweeds blow across that huge stadium of yours, the one place you were sure would be a bastion against defeat and think to myself they smell a little like fine Wisconsin cheese.

Sincerely,

Lance Martin

Editor and publisher, rrspin