DALLAS, TEXAS — The Dallas Cowboys lost their season opener 28-20 to the New York Giants, and the specific reason the loss is, in the specific, a loss is that their wide receiver, George Pickens, caught three passes and did not catch the other four, and the team’s official response to the matter was a sentence, and the sentence was, in the specific, “you’ve got to finish the catch.”

The sequence, for those who missed it, is as follows. Pickens was targeted seven times. He caught three, for 28 yards. And he dropped two more, which is, in the specific, the thing that happens when a pass is not finished. The team, when asked about the drops, said the ball had to be finished. The drop, for the record, is the ball not being caught, and the finish is the catch, so the team’s position, in the specific, is that the reason the ball was not caught is that it had to be caught.

"You can run a beautiful route, you've still got to finish the catch." — the team's complete explanation of a dropped pass

The player, for his part, was frank about it. “Definitely the releases,” he said. “I’d probably say the releases. Really everything. I felt like I was open on most of the stuff, honestly.” And then the sentence the team has since made its own: “Just making the play, you’ve got to finish it. You can run a beautiful route, you’ve still got to finish the catch.” Which is, in the specific, the most complete explanation of a dropped pass ever given, which is to say the pass was not caught because the catch was not finished, which is the same as saying it was not caught, but said, in the specific, as a lesson.

The coach, Brian Schottenheimer, was even more economical with his language. When asked what he had said to Pickens about the drops, the coach said he had said nothing, and that Pickens would be, in the specific, “just fine.” That is the response to a receiver who had just dropped two passes in a season-opening loss: that the receiver is fine. The word “fine” does a great deal of work in the modern NFL, and the Cowboys have, in the specific, made it their own.

THE DROPS, AS THE RECORD SHOWS

  • The target count: Seven. The number of times the ball was put in the receiver's area. The area is where the drops happen.
  • The catches: Three, for 28 yards. The 28 is the number, and the number is the thing the drops would have changed.
  • The drops: Two. The two are the thing the team has described. The description is "you've got to finish the catch."
  • The coach's take: "Just fine." The two words that are the complete assessment, and the assessment is that the receiver is fine.
  • The player's take: "I felt like I was open on most of the stuff." The phrase that means the ball was there, and it was not finished.

The irony is not in the drops. The irony is in the response. The team was asked why the receiver dropped the ball, and the team said the ball was dropped because it had to be finished, which is the thing a ball does not do on its own. The team’s position is that the receiver’s job is to finish it, and the finish is the catch, and the catch, in the specific, was the thing that was not done. The lesson, as delivered, is that the ball, in the specific, wants to be finished, and the receiver is the one who has to do the finishing, which is the job, and the job is the thing that was, in the specific, the thing.

At press time, the receiver was fine, the coach was satisfied, and the drops were still on the tape, doing the thing the team has decided to call a finish, which is the word, and the word is the one that does the rest.