ARLINGTON, Texas – You must be sick.

Maybe you would too, if you were here watching the unthinkable on Monday night, with 92,587 fans at AT&T Stadium watching the Cowboys-Bengals play to keep their playoff hopes alive.

These Cowboys have been scratching and clawing for a month now, despite injury after injury. That included two other starters on Monday Night Football’s national broadcast, as well as All-Pro guard Zack Martin, who placed on the MASH unit’s injured reserve before the game. And as if it wasn’t enough, no longer playing without Dak Prescott, without DeMarcus Lawrence, four games without Micah Parsons, two games without Trevon Diggs, seven games with Brandin Cooks, ten games with DaRon Bland and so on.

And even in this Week 14 game, they lose center Cooper Beebe to a concussion and have to move backup right guard Brock Hoffman, who replaced Martin at right guard, to center and use TJ Bass at right guard. They also started veteran swing tackle Chuma Edoga because not only had rookie starter Tyler Guyton not practiced all week, but his replacement, Asim Richards, had to be placed on injured reserve the previous week.

But now, with two minutes to play, these Cowboys were tied 20-20, and knowing that at 5-7, if they could win this game and move to 6-7, they would only have two teams better They had records in front of them that would be vying for that third place in the wild card playoffs: Washington at 8-5, a team that the Cowboys had already beaten and got to play again, and the Los Angeles Rams with them 7-6 with four games left to play.

As Mike McCarthy said, “We needed this and that’s how we approached it.”

And they were there after the two-minute warning, having held in check the powerful Cincinnati offense and quarterback Joe Burrow, who leads the NFL in pass attempts, completions and pass yards with 30 touchdown passes – all in one Team that had scored at least 30 points six times this season, including in three of the last four games – just 20 points. On the game’s most important possession, Dallas forced them to punt as the game resumed with a fourth-and-27 from the Bengals’ own 29-yard line.

That victory was within reach, even though Burrow had thrown for 312 yards to that point, 13 of his 31 completions to the NFL’s leading receiver, Jamarr Chase, for 137 yards, one for a touchdown. The Bengals had scored 41 touchdowns before this game, and in the remaining two minutes the Cowboys had limited them to just two touchdowns and two field goals, intercepting him once, sacking him twice and punting on him eight more times

“They just keep fighting, keep fighting,” said McCarthy, who knew that most outside their walls had already left this team for dead before they entered the night on a two-game winning streak.

And then the 7 seconds that will unfortunately live on in Cowboys lore. Bengals rookie Ryan Rehkow wanted to punt. It would be Turpin time. In fact, during the short break, the Bengals’ sidelines chatted with KaVontae Turpin, the NFL’s best return man, and tried to unsettle him as he waited for play to resume. Ha, not Turp. He simply walked slowly toward the Bengals’ sideline, at about the 20 or so, where the ensuing punt would predictably fall, and knowing him, he probably told them, “Wait until you see this.”

But of all people, the Bengals’ No. 45, Maema Mjongmeta, a third-string linebacker, sniffs his block from the Cowboys’ veteran special teams linebacker, Nick Vigil, who now has an unexpected free release against Rehkow.

Strike! A two-handed punt block in which the ball flutters forward and bounces around the 38-yard line. The Cowboys will have the ball on the Bengals’ 50-yard side with 1:53 left to play and Brandon Aubrey’s 60-yard field goal potential on their hands.

But when reserve cornerback Amani Oruwariye, who was one of two guys on that side of the ball said to have held up Cincinnati’s shooters, turns around, the ball bounces on a second bounce right to him at the 40-yard line. All he had to do was get out of the way of a blocked punt that crossed the line of scrimmage. Cowboys win possession wherever the ball rolls dead.

Have mercy, the ghost of the past with blocked kicks reared its ugly head. Those of us who have been here long enough remember Thanksgiving 1993. In a sleet/snow covered frozen artificial tundra at Texas Stadium, Leon Lett thought he had to recover a blocked field goal inside the 5 yard line to to salvage the Cowboys’ 14-13 victory over Miami in the final seconds. In his haste, old Leon, a reserve player on special teams but who had to play as an injury replacement, slid in and touched the ball, allowing the Dolphins to field the ball for a game-winning walk-off chip shot regain goal.

Poor Amani. Instinctively, he tried to catch the ball with two jumps in the mass chaos of humanity, but it bounced off his chest. And of all people – and you can’t make this up – Mjongmeta, the guy whose fake block on Vigil caused this entire scenario, is the one who recovers the now-live ball and gives the Bengals a most fortunate first-and-10 at the own 43-yard line with 1:53 minutes to play.

Three plays later came the game and most likely the Cowboys’ season, a short pass from Burrow to Chase at the Cowboys’ 32 that resulted in cornerback Bland overrunning the tackle and allowing Chase – since the Cowboys were up to six on the play and were in single safety -High coverage – Cover 40 yards for the winning touchdown with just 1:01 left on the clock.

In the Twilight Zone of a season, beginning with the strangeness of training camp, when one of the players’ rooms at the Residence Inn in Oxnard, California caught fire when a preseason game trip to Las Vegas was delayed because Mazi Smith unknowingly consumed alcohol with one supplement drink laced with a peanut substance (which quickly sent him to the hospital) when an inordinate number of injuries to Pro Bowl players struck that team, well…

Now, as they say, this is probably the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

“I know we really had to win that game to have, I would say, a real chance of getting into the playoffs,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. “And then some things had to happen for us. It was a setback for us last night, it was tough. … The bottom line is that this is the life we ​​chose.”

For example, what if Mjongmeta had simply done what he was supposed to do and blocked Vigil? What if Vigil hadn’t been there in time, or had retreated to block a potential rebound, or gotten enough of the ball to send it backwards? What if a fluttering, oblong ball hadn’t bounced straight to Amani? What if he had heard his teammates shouting “Poison!” or “Peter!” That means get out of the way immediately?

But this was, and with four games still to be played, a season marred by a kaleidoscope of “what ifs.”

For example, on a second-and-10 at the Bengals’ 12-yard line, what if CeeDee Lamb fails to meet Bengals safety Jordan Battle on his slant route and is deflected from his path, resulting in an easy Interception by Geno Stone leads? ?

What if the Cowboys had given Edoga some help on third-and-5 on the Bengals’ 17th play, when NFL sack leader Trey Hendrickson hit Cooper Rush, forcing an incompletion, and the Cowboys had to settle for a field goal ?

What if late in the third quarter, with the Cowboys on first-and-10 at the Cincinnati 29, Coop was sacked and then, amid some scrums and scrums, Luke Schoonmaker made a one-handed push to get Germaine Pratt away from one? Rush fell, and the 6-3, 250-pound guy flops better than Draymond Green and draws a 15-yard personal foul penalty on Schoonmaker, sending him back to a second-and-25 returned to the 46-yard line, which ultimately led to a 47-yard field goal by Aubrey?

My goodness, there are still 12:49 minutes to play, and who knows, but what if DeMarvion Overshown doesn’t get on top of it, goes down for the count, and has to limp off the field now of all times. Did he tear his right cruciate ligament after he injured his left knee in training camp last year, which cost him his rookie season?

This loss hurts. And we’re just a short week away from a road trip in Carolina.

“This loss hurts me more than any loss,” Parsons said.

“We fought until the end,” Lamb said, managing six catches, 93 yards and a touchdown despite apparently aggravating the shoulder injury that left him late in the Thanksgiving Day game and limited him in practice all week. “Obviously the boys didn’t give up. I didn’t give up. It just sucks to come up short.”

And to believe that this victory was within reach.

You train all summer. Practice all season. Play through all these injuries for 12 games, win the last two games in a row and get to 5-7 to keep hope alive. Do not give up. Never give up.

Yes, it kind of makes you sick.