The notion that the Dallas Cowboys can never have all three phases of the game playing at least average football at the same time has never been more true. In their last two games, they’ve gone to the fourth quarter with ten points or less, and failed to pull out either game. Their latest loss came at the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night, 23-13.
The Cowboys turned the ball over twice in the second quarter, and the Packers scored ten points off of them to create the winning margin. These drives also
saw the Packers hold the ball for over nine and a half minutes of the second quarter, and this came after Green Bay’s first offensive drive following a Dallas punt lasted 14 plays over six and a half minutes of game time and ended with a touchdown.
The Cowboys found a way to even out the final time of possession battle in this game, but the early favor for the home team again made Brian Schottenheimer’s offense one-dimensional. This set up far too many situations where the game came down to Schotty’s play calling in the pass game versus Packers defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s scheming. Cowboys fans have already seen in these first two months of the season how such matchups have gone, against John Harbaugh to start the season, Jesse Minter, and before this game Todd Bowles.
The only hope was that the extra time off after the embarrassing home loss to Bowles’ Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Thursday night would be the motivation needed for the coaching on offense to improve. Not only did this not happen, but the same woes against the blitz were evident all night from the Cowboys offense, something that used to be a strength of the passing game led by Dak Prescott.
Let’s get to some notes on the loss.
Over Packing
For the second week in a row, the Cowboys made far too many things difficult on themselves and had to battle against their own mistakes in addition to the opponent. The Cowboys did well to give themselves life in this game out of the locker room, but by the fourth quarter felt like a desperately worn out team with not even close to enough juice to pull out a win.
One of the most glaring areas the Cowboys are putting this on display is with the amount of plays they seemingly waste on offense. It’s gotten so bad that every highlight play is hardly a reason to cheer, and more so a chance to simply ask “why can’t we do that more often?”.
The Cowboys chose to start the game on offense, and faced an immediate third and short. Going to a formation they had success with against the Bucs with running back Javonte Williams in to protect, they hit Ryan Flournoy over the middle to convert. This first down helped the Cowboys overcome a negative Williams run on second down the play prior.
When faced with another third down right after Flournoy’s catch though, they used a play that we’ve highlighted time and time again as a drive killer, a pass behind the line of scrimmage to Williams. The Cowboys punted before either CeeDee Lamb or George Pickens ever got a target in this game, and although it wasn’t known yet, truly never connected with the game for the entire rest of the night from this point on – digging themselves a 17-0 hole by halftime.
The closest Dallas came to showing life in this game was when Williams scored the first points of the night in the third quarter to make the score 17-7. Schottenheimer called Williams’ number to carry the ball exactly one time from this point on until the end of the game. This drive even featured Lamb moving the chains on fourth down with the stack release alongside Flournoy, but it was a Cowboys opponent that yet again put on a masterclass of dictating matchups and playing a game on their terms compared to how few and far between these types of plays were for the Cowboys.
The late-game 4th-and-2 rollout to the left to cut the field in half for Prescott and throw a broken up pass intended for Lamb was also a headscratcher, and came after a third down where Dak and Lamb couldn’t beat the blitz with a short pass yet again.
It took just one game for the Cowboys to go from their worst run/pass split of the entire Schottenheimer era against the Bucs for them to reset this with an even more dramatic split of 54 throws to 15 runs on Sunday night. Their offensive line is not built to be going backwards in pass protection this often without reps to flex their muscle in run blocking, and the Cowboys paid for it at both tackle spots against the Packers.
Third Down & Dusted
We came into this matchup highlighting the need for the Cowboys to win on third down, and they did not. The Cowboys defense was the perfect ‘get right’ defense for the Packers offense to go from the worst third-down offense to 11-18 on Sunday night.
The Packers converted a 3rd-and-5, 3rd-and-13, and 3rd-and-13 again before scoring on 3rd-and-6 on Matthew Golden’s touchdown to jump ahead 7-0. Malik Hooker would make a 3rd-and-goal stop to hold the Packers to a field goal after this, which was a nice play from the veteran safety for a defense that again paid for it’s inexperience and youth in too many other spots this game (more on that later).
Green Bay went right back to picking up 3rd-and-8 on a Joey Porter Jr. pass interference penalty and a 3rd-and-6 on a long scramble drill from Jordan Love running away from Donovan Ezeiruaku, capping this drive with the score that put them up 17-0.
The other area the Cowboys failed yet again to help themselves in against an opponent that projected to give them a chance to do so was penalties, matching the Packers’ 11 penalties and having more penalty yards against. The Cowboys couldn’t even score late in the game on a drive extended with an illegal contact penalty on the defense on 3rd-and-20, interception called back by roughing the passer, and even a second roughing the passer call – all before a fourth down throwaway through the back of the endzone.
Rookie Defenders
It certainly wasn’t all bad for the Cowboys defense in this game, as they found their spots yet again to compete and try to keep an offense that was wasting one opportunity after another in the game. The Cowboys had Joey Porter Jr. back in the lineup at cornerback, and this made a difference in their coverage schemes being a lot tighter. They saw both Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark get a sack, with Clark’s forcing a very quick three and out to start the second half.
Some of these positives felt like early returns on the Mike Pettine hire, but sticking with the theme we started this whole recap with, not enough good things can be true for the Cowboys all at one time. What cost the Cowboys defensively too much in this game was the play of three of their rookies, Jaishawn Barham, Caleb Downs, and Malachi Lawrence.
Lawrence had the opportunity to start over Ezeiruaku, but as the game wore on there was plenty of both Ezeiruaku and Von Miller on the field, and no impact being felt from Lawrence to capitalize on this opportunity.
Downs was forced into a coverage role much more than he should be in this game, and saw a volume of throws that comes with Porter forcing quarterbacks to often throw elsewhere. It was Downs that didn’t plaster to Golden on the scramble drill to set up Jordan Love’s rushing touchdown at the end of the first half.
Finally, Barham didn’t get out to the flat route against TE Tucker Kraft on a key third down after the Cowboys cut the score to 17-7, extending a Packers drive that saw them build the lead to 20-7. He also whiffed on a tackle early in the game on third down that extended the Packers scoring drive.
There was so much talk leading into this game about the Cowboys paying for inexperience in their coaching staff led by defensive coordinator Christian Parker, just to see some slight improvement here, but pay a price for starting rookie defenders.
With Clark, Williams, and Porter making plays this game, at least the Cowboys shouldn’t be able to use their struggles this season as a deterrent to continue using player acquisition to improve. This doesn’t make it any less unimaginable at the moment that those are the type of discussions we have to have about this team before the end of October.
More reinforcements in the form of recently acquired players are on the way with Jalen Thompson, P.J. Locke, and Cobie Durant, and the NFC East being putrid is going to make talk from the top brass around this organization stay the course with things like playoff berths and excitement for having Dak Prescott.
After this loss though, it just feels like a big waiting game to see what will go wrong next when any of those things roll around, and another primetime road game on deck for next Monday at the Eagles.
