"One definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

Or is that the definition of a bad football team?

The Cowboys' inexorable slide into irrelevance continues. Sunday's 24-21 loss to Minnesota again featured the penalties, turnovers and breakdowns that have become all too familiar in this 1-4 start.

On this afternoon at the Metrodome, quarterback Tony Romo was unsure what happened on his first interception and never saw the player who picked off the second. The Cowboys were penalized 11 times for 91 yards and a penalty nullified what would have been a 68-yard touchdown strike to Miles Austin because the receiver interfered to get open.

The team kept Brett Favre, Randy Moss and Adrian Peterson in check but allowed Percy Harvin to change the complexion of the game with a 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to open the second half.

The Cowboys are stuck in the movie Groundhog Day with one, key exception.

No one is laughing. The Cowboys have even drained the optimism from owner Jerry Jones, something psychologists once believed was impossible.

The outlook is dire. Carolina, Detroit and San Francisco are the only teams in the NFC with worse records. Of the 96 teams that opened 1-4 since the playoff format changed in 1990, only four rebounded to make the playoffs.

The Cowboys are not on the list.

"I think you can crawl out of being 2-3," cornerback Terence Newman said. "One-and-four is a hole."

A hole the Cowboys have a 4.2 percent chance of escaping.

"We're not thinking about playoffs," coach Wade Phillips said. "We've got to get through this game, we've got a lot of things that we need to go over to try and get better on and go from there.

"We're going to play one play at a time, one game at a time."

Romo had another decent statistical afternoon. He was content to throw underneath Minnesota's Cover 2 scheme and completed 24-of-32 passes for 220 yards and three touchdowns. He wasn't sacked. "