"Jerry Jones, owner of the team with the NFL's highest payroll, can blame the Cowboys' sorry 1-6 record on the league's biggest collection of faux stars.

But they're also losing because there are good players who are playing average and average players who are playing badly and bad players who are playing even worse than that.

The people who are supposed to know better vastly overrated the talent on this team.

That's Jerry Jones. And Stephen Jones. And Wade Phillips. And the scouting department.

For whatever it's worth, so did I. You, too.

We all did.

But talented teams don't have four-game losing streaks. They don't go 0-4 at home.

They don't crater weekly at the first sign of adversity. They don't play without discipline and, at times, without effort.

They certainly don't spend a portion of each week spouting transparent rhetoric to anyone who'll listen that they haven't quit.

We saw them quit for two quarters against the Giants on Monday Night Football last week.

The Cowboys didn't play with passion or urgency in Sunday's blowout loss to Jacksonville, but they didn't quit.

They're just not good enough.

It starts with the team's best players such as DeMarcus Ware , Miles Austin and Jason Witten.

Ware didn't have a single tackle on Sunday.

Ridiculous.

Austin dropped yet another pass that resulted in an interception.

Even more ridiculous.

Witten and Austin have combined for 10 penalties.

Perhaps, the most ridiculous.

This team has too many players such as Anthony Spencer, Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins who we wrongly assumed were on the verge of stardom.

None is playing as well as he did last season. It's not even close.

Each was a difference-maker in 2009.

No more.

Spencer spent the second half of last season as a disruptive force. Now, long stretches occur and you don't even notice him, though he did notch a sack with the Cowboys trailing 28-3.

Jenkins has six pass interference penalties and one interception, and Jones couldn't make a telephone pole miss this season. The man who had 10 runs of more than 20 yards, including five of more than 40, in his first two seasons has two – both against Tennessee this season. "