The best thing you can say about Washington’s performance is that they managed to play well enough to almost not lose in heart-breaking fashion. That’s pretty suspect grammatically, but it more or less defined the play of the Redskins Sunday afternoon.

Once again, the defense looked meh, the offense played bleah, they strung some good plays into scoring drives and missed some golden opportunities on both sides of the ball. By the time Nick Novak missed his 49-yard figgie try near the end of the game, fans were likely hanging their head. And one could not be blamed for reaching for the remote after Dallas QB Tony Romo hit Jason Witten for a 28-yard completion that set kicker Mike Vanderjagt up for a 35-yard attempt to win the game.

But that’s when bad decisions, bad play, and, dare we say it, bad karma came back to haunt Dallas.

The contest was one of those games where a handful of frozen moments stood out in stark relief, and on Sunday, all of them seemed to prey on the Cowboys. There was Julius Jones failing to get out of his own end zone for a safety, sapping the momentum gained from a goal-line stand moments before. There was Roy Williams committing pass interference on a wide-receiver option, allowing a huge gain. There was the way the Dallas defender tipped a floater into Chris Cooley’s hands for a critical touchdown. And, on a play most Dallas fans are going to remember, especially considering how well Romo played, there was T.O. dropping a beautifully thrown bomb that would have surely gone for a backbreaking touchdown.