Much has been made - including by me - of the Cowboys' tendency to play poorly and lose games in December. I've thought that blaming this on Wade Phillips is pretty unfair, since it seemed to me that this trend goes back through a few other coaches, so I thought I'd look it up. You might be surprised what I found.

I only went as far as the 1978 Season, the first year with a sixteen game schedule, and I looked at the last four games. Some years, that includes one game in November or one game in January, rather than all four in December. I considered it a "late season slump" if the team lost at least two games, even though that would put them at .500. Last year, for example, although the Cowboys lost two games, they were 2-2 in December and 3-2 post-Thanksgiving. Given that they sat starters and did not even try to win the season ender, it almost seems unfair to count it as a slump - unless you watched them play.

So, in 30 NFL seasons prior to this one, how many times did the Cowboys post a record above .500? Only eight times. In all of those seasons they made the play-offs, and in all but one of them, they won their first play-off game. Three times they went to the Super Bowl, winning it twice.

The last time the Cowboys lost fewer than 2 of their final four was in 1996. Like last year, the team sat the starters and did not try to win the final game. By coincidence (or not?) that is also the last year the team won a play-off game.

That almost sounds like a trend, doesn't it? Except for this - prior to this most recent unfortunate stretch, in the five years when the Cowboys lost at least two of their final four but still made the play-offs, they played in three NFC Championships, won one Super Bowl and only lost in the first round once. That's just about the same performance they had in the eight play-off seasons with winning Decembers.

It's easy to point to losing December records as the reason the Cowboys failed in the play-offs, but let's think about a few other reasons at play in the current five season stretch of first round losses.

In 1998, although they won the division at 10-6, the Cowboys were 2-6 outside the division. It was a supreme irony that their play-off loss was to a division rival, but was that really a big surprise? The next year, at 8-8, the Cowboys probably did not really belong in the play-offs in the first place, and it was no surprise they fell to the high-scoring Vikings on the road. The Quincy Carter-led 2003 Cowboys clearly over-achieved and lost on the road to the Super Bowl-bound Panthers. In 2006, a similar story, as the Wild Card Cowboys, with Tony Romo making his 11th career start, lost by one point on the road to the defending NFC Champions.

Which brings us to last year. And I just can't talk about last year any more. Suffice it to say that it is legitimate to argue that the Cowboys "should have won" in the play-offs, but it is difficult, in light of past years, to say that the reason they lost was a December slump. But does December matter?

Obviously, when a team, like the 2007 Giants, or the 2005 Steelers, gets on a late-season roll, they are very hard to stop. Right now, the Cowboys have no choice but to get on a roll, because I don't think there is any way they make the play-offs unless they win at least four of the last five games.

Does December always matter? No. But some years, for some teams, it is all that matters. This year, that team is the Dallas Cowboys.