Occasionally after a big win over a big Packers rival — usually the Bears or Vikings — I like to bring blog readers the perspective of the losing side’s news media, which often turn on the team they’re covering.

That particularly is the case with Sunday’s improbable 37-36 Packers win over Dallas, in which the Cowboys blew a 26-3 halftime lead. The comeback matched the 1982 season-opening game in which the Los Angeles Rams scored the game’s first 23 points, but the Packers scored the last 35 points.

The Cowboys are one of the Packers’ three biggest outside-the-division rivals. (The other two are San Francisco and the New York Giants.) There’s the Ice Bowl, of course (along with the NFL championship game one year earlier), and the Cowboys’ domination of the Packers in their infrequent ’70s and ’80s meetings. But when Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys, and when the Cowboys ended three consecutive postseasons, that’s what stokes a rivalry.

Perhaps this photo of Jones should be on page 1 of today’s Metroplex newspapers:

Or, in the words of Cowboys fan Hank Hill of Arlen, Texas:

ESPN Dallas called the game a “Total Meltdown”:

The Cowboys had a 23-point lead against a backup quarterback and could not close the deal as they continued to find inventive ways to lose in 2013 as well as continue their December woes.

Tony Romo threw two fourth-quarter interceptions. The first led to Green Bay’s game-winning touchdown and the second killed any chance the Cowboys had of coming back for the win. …

Romo’s final pass was picked off by Tramon Williams with 1:22 to play and it sent the Cowboys fans rushing to the exits and the large number of Packers fans into hysteria after Walt Coleman overturned what had been called an incomplete pass.

Two weeks after Sports Illustrated gushed over Romo, the Dallas Morning News has a different opinion:

1.) Another poor finish to put on Tony Romo’s resume. The Cowboys’ franchise quarterback threw two interceptions in the final minutes and he has no one to blame but himself. As great as Romo has been at times in his career, there’s no denying that his critical mistakes is what he will be forever known for. Romo had a chance to put this game on ice when he threw deep to Dez Bryant late in the fourth quarter on first down. Yes, the Cowboys should’ve ran the ball, but Bryant was wide open and Romo under threw him. The two picks followed and the Cowboys might’ve just watched a playoff berth go out the window.

2. The defense was bad, but you shouldn’t have expected anything different. The injuries and poor scheme have done this franchise no favors. It’s not fair, but the offense has to carry this team. Sunday against a bad Green Bay club, they couldn’t get the job done. The blowout on Monday night was bad, but the way they lost Sunday is even more embarrassing.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a quote about Romo’s interception that set up the game-winning touchdown that will make Cowboys fans scream:

Five plays later, Romo was intercepted by Sam Shields at midfield with 2:50 left in the game.

“It’s a run call. That specific time, we should have run the ball,” Romo said. “It’s tough. They overloaded the side we were going to run the ball to. It’s my fault putting the ball in position for the defense to make a play.” …

Two plays after the ensuing kickoff, Romo was intercepted by Tramon Williams with 1:22 left to play. On first down, Romo threw 9 yards to Beasley. On second down, Williams intercepted Romo on a similar play intended for Beasley. Beasley stopped on the route and Romo threw outside.

The News’ Rainer Sabin pursues the failure-to-run angle:

The Cowboys seemed determined to throw even in situations that didn’t require them to pass. Case in point: The interception that was the Cowboys’ coup de grace. The original play was a run but Tony Romo checked out of it and sealed Dallas’ fate.

“Certainly it didn’t work out well for us,” head coach Jason Garrett said. “We’ll go back and look at what we did.”

The film will show that the Cowboys curiously marginalized DeMarco Murray in a game he averaged 7.4 yards per carry and gained 134 yards. Murray faded in the background as the Cowboys carried the ball seven times in the second half and played like a team aiming to overcome a deficit as opposed to one trying to maintain a lead.

It was uncertain how Murray felt about how his reduced involvement after his day began with great promise when he sliced through the Packers front during a 41-yard dash in on the team’s second possession. After carrying the ball 18 times in a game in which Tony Romo had 51 dropbacks, the third-year tailback disappeared from the locker room by the time the media invaded the premises. But the man he runs behind, newly-acquired fullback Tyler Clutts, was there. Asked to explain why the Cowboys didn’t keep feeding the ball to Murray, Clutts didn’t give a definitive answer.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve got to control what we can and we didn’t do enough to win the game. Simple as that.”

Clutts joined the team earlier this month. By then, the Cowboys had shown that they were so committed to throwing to the ball that they sometimes paid for their allegiance to that pass-first philosophy. In a close-shave victory over Minnesota last month, Tony Romo dropped back 54 times and the Cowboys called eight running plays.

A week later, in a blowout loss to New Orleans, they dug themselves a hole at the end of the first half when Romo misfired three consecutive times on one series. The Saints got the ball back, scored a touchdown and cruised to an easy win. Essentially the same scenario unfolded last Monday in a deflating defeat to Chicago. Near the end of the second quarter, Romo threw errantly on three straight downs, the Cowboys punted, and the Bears scored just before the break to take a commanding lead.

Then came Sunday.

“At different times in the second half, we probably could have run the ball more,” Garrett said.

But they didn’t. After building a substantial lead, the Cowboys, who entered Sunday throwing 64.1 percent of the time, were reluctant to feature Murray. In the final two quarters, the Cowboys carried out 11 plays on second-down – when the decision to run or pass is usually a toss-up – and Murray was handed the ball on only one of them.

Garrett, who hears Callahan’s play-calls through the headset he wears, acted as if he was powerless over how the offense was managed during the period when they lost control of the game.

“We wanted to mix run and pass,” Garrett said. “…We’ll go back and evaluate and see how well we did that.”

About clock management: In the NFL, the 40-second play clock begins after the end of the play, when the official either waves the game clock to a stop or raises his hand and blows his whistle. (In high school and college, the play clock starts when an official spots the ball at the new line of scrimmage.) So if an NFL team does nothing but hand off and gains not one single yard, that team can take 2 minutes, plus however long the plays take to run, off the clock. Given that, the only way the Packers could have stopped the clock in the fourth quarter is by using their time outs and with the two-minute warning. The bizarre thing is that, thanks to Shields’ interception, Packers fans probably thought Eddie Lacy scored too soon with 1:31 left.

But as the News’ Brandon George reports, it wasn’t just the offense:

The Cowboys actually forced Green Bay to punt Sunday six days after Chicago never did in a Monday night meltdown.

But Packers punter Tim Masthay was nowhere to be found in the second half.

After only allowing Green Bay a 57-yard field goal in the first half, the Cowboys’ NFL-worst defense showed its true colors in the second half.

The Packers scored touchdowns on all five second-half possessions before they kneeled three consecutive times to end the Cowboys’ misery.

After the Cowboys blew a 26-3 halftime lead, owner Jerry Jones still said he has “a lot of confidence” in defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin because of his experience.

The Cowboys played the entire second half with their top four linebackers out with injuries. Their top two defensive linemen – DeMarcus Ware and Jason Hatcher – combined for only one tackle.

“The second half was a complete debacle,” Cowboys cornerback Brandon Carr said, “and they took advantage of us. We couldn’t get off the field once again.”

A Cowboys’ defense that held Green Bay to 1-for-6 on third-down attempts in the first half couldn’t get the Packers to punt in the last two quarters.

Green Bay converted 6-of-7 third-down attempts in the second half. The only one they didn’t convert was the third-down kneel by Green Bay quarterback Matt Flynn to end the game.

The News’ Tim Cowlishaw blames, well, everyone:

An organizational failure of epic proportions. Sunday’s 37-36 loss to Green Bay at AT&T Stadium was nothing less and, when it comes to head coach Jason Garrett, the hot seat is back in play.

The old “clock management” issue that troubled Garrett in seasons past was reopened Sunday…even if Garrett all but suggested he has no control over it.

Meanwhile, the bad news for Garrett is that the Cowboys have blown four leads of 20 or more points and, while one came in 1965 before the team ever had a winning record and another in 1988 when Tom Landry was about to get fired, the top two have come on Garrett’s watch.

Here’s another stat that isn’t pretty. The Packers tied their team record for biggest comeback (23 points), and they’ve only been in the NFL since about a decade before the Great Depression.

What the Cowboys are experiencing is a fairly standard December recession. Still, I think the head coach has plenty of help in making these awful things happen.

Garrett’s not the type to point fingers directly, pull a Bill Parcells and say “I’m not the one who committed all those penalties.”

Then again when asked about the failure to protect a lead — specifically about throwing late when they should have been running and forcing Green Bay to use timeouts — Garrett could not have been more direct.

“The idea was to run the ball and use the clock,” he said, then explained how the  system allows Tony Romo to change to pass plays if he sees nine defenders geared to stop the run.

He also made it clear about where those play calls are coming from.

“Bill (Callahan) calls the plays,” Garrett said. No hesitation, no suggestion that his headset gives him any more access to play calls than a Jeff Gordon fan listening to the 24 team’s radio during a NASCAR race.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said last month that Garrett was coming back for 2014. That doesn’t mean it’s written in stone — he was pretty steadfast about Chan Gailey coming back in 1999 right up until he fired him two days after a playoff loss in Minnesota. …

We are running out of things to say about how bad Monte Kiffin’s defense is, how irrelevant DeMarcus Ware has become, how many relative no-name receivers Brandon Carr can’t cover (add the Packers’ Jarrett Boykin to the roll call) and so on.

A Green Bay team that managed three points in the first half scored five touchdowns in the second, three of them on 80-yard drives.

The Cowboys offense could have limited the carnage had Romo avoided those (gulp) two late interceptions. Yes, the entire world should know by now that Cole Beasley cut short his route on the final ill-fated throw. Beasley, Garrett and Romo made sure of that with their post-game remarks.

The Star–Telegram’s Randy Galloway adds:

The easy answer is this:

Fire everybody. Now.

But since there’s nobody to jettison Jerry Jones, that allows his butt to wiggle off the hook. For nearly two decades, Jerry has done no time for his multiple football crimes.

Speaking, however, of blame:

Honk if you are guilty of having overrated Mr. Jones’ current maggot-mess of a football club.

Personally, I’m leaning on the horn based on a seasonlong assessment that the Cowboys were the epitome of NFL mediocrity.

The month of December, however, has totally exposed the fallacy of that theory.

Mediocrity would be a pronounced upgrade. Instead, this is simply a decaying club, which between Chicago last Monday night and here at the Big Yard on Sunday afternoon is rotting from the head down. Jerry’s head. 

But let’s not waste time here. We need to get right to Tony.

Green Bay’s second half offensive tsunami swept the Cowboys into the history pages for dubious franchise deeds with a 37-36 win column rescue by the Packers, drawing the obvious question of “worst loss ever?”

The answer is yes. Simply because it was the latest loss that defied logic.

But at his going financial rate of $108 million, Tony Romo was outplayed for the second game in six days by a backup quarterback. This time, Matt Flynn. Last week, Josh McCown.

In Romo’s defense, he isn’t facing the depleted Cowboys’ defense, which even outdid itself in incompetence by giving up five straight touchdown drives in Sunday’s second half as Green Bay rallied from a 26-3 intermission deficit.

Then again, it’s not like the Packers, or the Bears last week, don’t have some serious defensive problems of their own.

But Romo throwing interceptions on the Cowboys’ last two possessions, one pick while attempting to milk a five-point lead, the other while attempting to get into field-goal position for the trusty foot of Dan Bailey, is the way this loss closed out.

The last pick was not Romo’s fault. Young receiver Cole Beasley simply cut off a sideline route.

The other one? Good grief, Tony. …

Romo dodged a defender who came loose on the play, but then his pass was a tad behind Miles Austin. Such a game-changing opportunity did not elude cornerback Sam Shields.

But so much of the second half came down to the Cowboys not using the run game enough, particularly since it was effective all afternoon.

Then again, when the game became a shootout, the emphasis was on the Cowboys putting up points. “It’s easy to look back now and say, ‘Run the ball, run the ball,’ but at the same time, if they are going to have numbers [the Packers stacking the defensive box], it’s a tough situation,” Romo said.

“What I have to do is a better job of protecting the ball, and I didn’t do a good enough job of that. I will next time.”

Aikman and play-by-play voice Joe Buck proved an excoriating tag team in their critique of the Cowboys play calling and clock management in Dallas’ 37-36 come-from-ahead loss to the Green Bay Packers in front of a national television audience.

In the end, Buck concluded the loss “is going to go down as one of the worst defeats in the history of the Dallas Cowboys.”

Added Aikman: “It’s hard to explain but the clock management by the Dallas Cowboys was about as bad as I’ve seen.”

That would include the play calls that ran through Coach Jason Garrett, once Aikman’s backup with the Cowboys and still his friend.

Just minutes before as the Packers were en route to their game-winning touchdown Aikman called out star defensive end DeMarcus Ware, who had been invisible all game.

“This is where DeMarcus Ware needs to show up,” Aikman told America. “He was challenged this week. He’s been a non-factor all afternoon.”

Ware didn’t show. …

Recall that the Cowboys led 26-3 at the half and they still led 29-17 as the third quarter wound down. Inexplicably, the Cowboys insisted on throwing the ball despite a successful running attack by DeMarco Murray, who was running with ease. He was averaging seven yards per carry. Running eats clock. Just what the Cowboys needed most.

After three consecutive incompletions all Aikman could say about the choice of plays had been a “big mistake.”

In the wake of one seemingly ill-timed Romo pass, the four words America heard were: “Are you kidding me?”

Considering the source it was a four-word indictment harsher than anything tweeted or written in its wake.

And there was Buck coming off the top rope when Packers defensive back Sam Shields intercepted a Romo pass on a second-down-and-six at the Cowboys 35 yard-line with a little less than three minutes remaining. Murray had just rushed for four yards.

“Why the Dallas Cowboys refused to run the ball in this situation is inexplicable,” Buck said. “The play calling of the Dallas Cowboys will come under serious question.”

USA Today poured gasoline on the fire:

After a furious Green Bay Packers comeback on Sunday cut a 26-3 halftime Cowboys lead to 36-31, Dallas had the ball up five points with just over two minutes remaining. On a second-and-6, when almost every other NFL team would be running the ball to milk the clock, Romo dropped back, scrambled away from a rush and threw an inexplicable, indefensible interception that led to the game-winning score for the Packers.

Then, when he had a chance at redemption with 1:20 remaining and his team down one point, Romo threw another pick, ending the game and bailing out the Philadelphia Eagles for an earlier loss in Minnesota. Now, the NFC East is in the hands of Philly, not Dallas, because Romo couldn’t keep the ball away from the Packers.

The Romo defenders, and there are plenty out there, will say the biggest story of the game is the absolute second-half collapse of the Dallas defense. It’s not Romo’s fault his team’s defense gave up five second-half touchdowns on the first five second-half possessions to a team that could barely win a game without Aaron Rodgers as a starter. And it’s not his fault the Dallas play calls were for passes instead of runs on the clock-killing possession at the end of the game.

These things are all true — though, there’s criticism when teams throw late (“they’re being too reckless) and there’s criticism when they run, (they’re playing it too safe) and these gripes always fit snugly into the game narrative. The Dallas defense is terrible and the playcalling was baffling. But the defense didn’t throw behind Miles Austin on the first pick, nor did it float a pass to a wideout who stopped on his route on the second. That’s on Romo and that’s life in the NFL. Quarterbacks are the heroes and quarterbacks are the goats and there’s rarely an in between.

The Cowboys were not the only victims Sunday:

This police motorcycle reportedly was run over by the Packers’ team bus.