Walkthrough Week 7: The Wolf You Feed

There is a modern meme about an old proverb about two wolves. It goes like this:

There are two wolves within each of us, and they are always fighting. One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope. Which wolf wins? The one you feed.

The meme usually claims that the proverb is Native American in origin. The tale was actually popularized by evangelist Billy Graham in the 1960s. It might have a folkloric origin, but it’s odd for folklore to suddenly materialize in the 1960s, then start going viral in the 2010s. The tale provided the thematic button for the film The New Mutants, with the wolves changed to bears, but it’s entirely possible that I am the only person who saw that movie.

Whatever its origin, the two wolves proverb offers sound advice for anyone who fears that their own rage and hopelessness will consume them. That may be why it has become so popular recently, with so many terrible things happening in the world right now: the collapse of the Ravens, the two-game Bills losing streak, heavy favorites getting upset each week on Thursday night, and so on.

Many teams entered Week 7 with two warring wolves within them. Which wolf did each team feed on Sunday? Let’s find out.

Dallas Cowboys

Good Wolf: A star-studded offensive juggernaut that overcame an early-season injury rash to remain in the heat of the NFC playoff chase and has started to get some of their most important players back.

Bad Wolf: Jerrah Jones’ Rootin’-Tootin’-Six-Gun Shootin’ Wild West Revue, now featuring even more tough talk and almost no defense or common sense!

Week 7 Opponent: Washington Commanders. A solid team, except that everyone is either old, banged-up, cranky or old-banged-up-and-cranky (Deebo Samuel).

Final Score: Cowboys 44, Commanders 22

Every once in a while, the Cowboys play a nationally-televised game in which the referees decide that they’re the stars.

CeeDee Lamb’s return rendered the Cowboys offense unstoppable, except when it stopped itself with a first-quarter safety on a stuffed Javonte Williams plunge. The officials called 14 penalties before halftime, and while it was hard to quibble with most of the calls (ripping Dak Prescott’s helmet off is, in fact, a penalty), the constant high-impact flags made the first half look like a silly exercise in random chaos ball.

Then the Commanders, already without top receivers Terry McLaurin and Samuel, lost Jayden Daniels to a hamstring injury. Marcus Mariota entered the game, burped a gutterball into the flat that DaRon Bland fetched and returned for a pick-6, and this game really did become a silly exercise in random chaos ball.

This game was not competitive from the Daniels injury onward. Yet it continued, preventing the national television audience from watching tighter contests, until the 54.5 point Over was easily cleared and 21 total penalties for 197 yards were dished out.

The Cowboys Fed Their Good Wolf

Place the Cowboys in the mental slot you typically reserve for the Bengals. The front office is a source of tragicomedy. The coaching staff hasn’t really earned any trust. The defense would have given up 35 points if the Commanders had a single healthy wide receiver. But Dak Prescott, Lamb and George Pickens give the Cowboys the capability to score at least 30 points on anyone. Few other teams have that capability.

Will the Cowboys lose some more games in spectacular and hilarious fashion this season? You bet your sweet bippy they will! But how many? Three more? Five? Seven? And which ones? These are questions upon which the NFC playoffs will hinge. The Cowboys could lose to the Cardinals and Raiders but beat the Chiefs and Lions en route to the playoffs. They are variance goblins. And that makes them dangerous.

Just keep wagering those Overs!

Quick Commanders Thoughts

The Daniels injuries are now arriving in little bundles. The Commanders need to be very, very worried about it.

Green Bay Packers

Good Wolf: Super Bowl shortlisters who made a bold over-the-top move just before the season started and already reaped some dividends with wins over two tough conference foes.

Bad Wolf: Joyless success-o-phobes who don’t want their superstars to shine too brightly, lest it clash with their egalitarian ideal of an offense where every receiver gets precisely 3.25 targets per game.

Week 7 Opponent: Arizona Cardinals. Their Bad Wolf ate their Good Wolf circa 2015.

Final Score: Packers 27, Cardinals 23

You aren’t gonna believe this, but the Packers offense coughed and sputtered along without any semblance of cohesion or precision for much of the game, allowing a weak opponent with a creaky backup quarterback to hang around for far too long. Where did we see this before? Oh yeah, Week 3 against Joe Flacco and the Browns, then Week 6 against Joe Flacco and the Bengals.

The Cardinals led 23-20 midway through the fourth quarter when the Packers defense stuffed Jacoby Brissett on a fourth-and-1 sneak near midfield. The Packers offense then downshifted into towing gear, with Josh Jacobs doing most of the dirty work — save for a fourth-and-2 sideline grab by Tucker Kraft — on a game-winning grind-it-out touchdown drive.

The Packers Fed Both Wolves

The Packers are like the Eagles but with 90% less benefit of the doubt.

When the Eagles offense, which we will get to in a moment, goes three-and-out for a few series/quarters/weeks, it’s safe to assume that they will eventually snap out of it. That’s because we have seen the Eagles offense accomplish great things in the past.

When the Packers offense collapses into a jumble of errant throws, third-down bounce passes and sacks where it looks like Jordan Love tried to step sideways and fell down a manhole, it takes takes some imagination to picture them snapping out of it. That’s because the Packers often look like they are making things up as they go along and trying to hard to get everyone involved, and it usually haunts them against stouter opponents.

The Packers mustered just enough offense out of turnovers, a scrambles-and-penalties touchdown drive and a 61-yard field goal on Sunday. Brissett sustained more drives than he should have against the Packers defense, though Micah Parsons (remember him?) delivered some clutch pressures and sacks.

It all proved good enough against the Cardinals, just as it proved good enough against the Bengals and not-quite good enough against the Browns. Good enough won’t be good enough when it matters.

Quick Cardinals Notes

Welcome to the five-alarm Brissett-versus-Kyler-Murray controversy, Jonathan Gannon! Your coaching tenure won’t survive the experience.

Philadelphia Eagles

Good Wolf: The defending champions, led by the NFL’s best front-line talent, still near the top of the standings.

Bad Wolf: A middle-school drama club in which the kids who play Fiona, Shrek and Donkey keep breaking up with each other in the hallway ten minutes before the dress rehearsal, and the director is a moonlighting cafeteria monitor.

Week 7 Opponent: Minnesota Vikings, who spent the week wondering whether they should flush J.J. McCarthy down the toilet but telling their fans that they set him loose in a nearby lake to swim free.