Arlington, Texas ? Eli Manning is looking forward to going back to the visitors’ locker room at Cowboys Stadium tonight, especially the little attendant’s room behind the main section.

The last time Manning was there, he’d just led the New York Giants to a comeback victory in the first regular-season game ever played at Jerry Jones’ $1.2 billion playpen. He celebrated with a bit of graffiti — tagging a wall as he’d done in other visiting locker rooms in the NFL. None of the other walls he scribbled on, however, were so pristine, and he never left a message with such bluster.

He wrote:

Eli 10 Manning

9-20-09

“33-31”

First Win in the New Stadium

“So,” Manning said this week, “it will be interesting to see if anybody else has signed the wall, or if I’m the only one, or if they erased it.”

Well, Eli, at the risk of ruining the surprise …

It’s gone. Forgotten, the Cowboys hope, just like the start of this season.

At 1-4, Dallas is off to its poorest start since 2001. The club was supposed to be a Super Bowl contender after winning the division and reaching the conference semifinals last season.

The Cowboys have been in every game they’ve played — only to find a way to lose through a combination of penalties, turnovers (too many on offense, not enough on defense) and kickoff coverage. Another loss would drop them to 0-3 at home for the first time since 1989, when they went 1-15 in the first year under Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson.

That’s not the only history Dallas needs to be mindful of.

The Cowboys are at a make-or-break point for playoff hopes. From 1990 (when the playoffs expanded to the current six-team-per-conference system) through last season, just five of the 97 clubs that started 1-4 recovered enough to reach the postseason. No team has gone 1-5 and still made it.