The Morning According to Us

Michael Irvin is lucky, or he stared down a moron.

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Ich bin ein playmaker!

Monday night, Michael Irvin made the mistake of rolling down his window. He was in his car, at a red light on Marsh Lane in Dallas and a passenger in the vehicle one lane over appeared to want to talk to him. When Irvin obliged, he saw the gun. What happened next speaks to either Irvin's dexterity as a negotiator, or the passenger's utter stupidity as a criminal.

We should first say that this was no laughing matter and we're glad The Playmaker is okay. Of course, by saying he's okay, we give away the ending, which is that each car went its separate way, no one was hurt and no money exchanged hands. But the ending isn't what makes this story strange. Everything before that makes it strange.

So Irvin rolls down the window and sees a semi-automatic pistol pointed at him. The man holding the pistol Irvin can't identify, perhaps because, you know, he's holding a pistol and pointing it at Irvin. When the passenger realizes it's Irvin, he says, "Oh, that's Michael Irvin." Irvin sees his social in and begins chatting up the would-be robber, though he admist later he was still quite scared. They talk Cowboys, and eventually the scene—as the TV cops say—de-escalates, each car heading off into the winter night.

For one, if Irvin can truly use his rhetoric like this, Jerry Jones should pay him as a player liaison. Bring to the table Tony Romo and T.O. and have them work out their beefs before anything hasty is done in the name of "team chemistry."

Or it could be that Irvin just got lucky. He might have been robbed by the dumbest criminal in Dallas. Think about it: You're a criminal, you hold up a man you know to be worth millions, and you drive away? This had not been the case for other NFL players. Heck, we wrote a whole story about the precautions players are taking. Perhaps only in hindsight, knowing that Irvin is safe, can you entertain the thought: that passenger must have been some Cowboys fan.

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