There are technically three weeks left in the regular season, and the math says they’re still alive, but the Dallas Cowboys’ season effectively ended on Sunday night in front of a national audience.
After the loss in Detroit snapped a three-game losing streak, it was easy to say the Cowboys simply ran out of steam. Playing three games in 12 days – with two coming against last year’s Super Bowl teams – will do that to you. But they needed to prove that narrative by beating the Vikings, who had been
eliminated from the playoffs earlier in the day, at home after a mini-bye week.
They did not.
It wasn’t just the fact that they lost, but it was how they lost. Coming into the game, everyone knew the challenge Minnesota presented. Defensive coordinator Brian Flores is a master at changing the picture post-snap, and there’s a short list of quarterbacks he hasn’t had at least some success against. But the Vikings offense has struggled all year, especially quarterback J.J. McCarthy.
After two drives in this one, it looked like the Cowboys were about to roll. On the second play of the game, Donovan Wilson tipped McCarthy’s pass up in the air and Quinnen Williams intercepted it off the ricochet. Then, after coming up short on third down, Dallas perfectly executed a fake field goal that gave them a first down.
A few plays later, the typically-conservative Brian Schottenheimer went for it on fourth down again, picking it up again. The next play, Javonte Williams ran in for a touchdown. The Cowboys simply could not be denied, despite the best efforts of the Vikings defense.
From there, things changed in a hurry. Williams got banged up and Flores’ exotic pressure looks started to slow down Dak Prescott and the passing game. That on its own wasn’t a real concern – any offense expects ebbs and flows against this defense – but the big issue was that McCarthy and the offense started to heat up.
An explosive run from Certified Cowboy Killer™ Aaron Jones was extended by a horse collar tackle, and then McCarthy found Jailen Nailor on an off-platform throw for a touchdown, tying things up. The Cowboys would score another touchdown – Malik Davis this time – but Minnesota responded, and McCarthy ran in for a score on fourth and goal.
What happened after that was when the tide really started to turn.
The Cowboys started to figure some things out against Flores’ scheme, and Prescott found CeeDee Lamb for a 17-yard pickup on fourth down, but Terence Steele was beat badly on third down for a sack. No problem, just send out Brandon Aubrey for a 51-yard field goal so automatic they might as well not even bother kicking it, right?
Nope. Aubrey missed.
It turned out to be the first of two misses, as Aubrey later shanked a 59-yarder. He connected on four other field goals, sure, but seeing Aubrey miss multiple field goals in a single game was jarring. It seemed to impact the team, too, as the Cowboys started to lose their grasp on the game from the moment that first kick sailed right.
The offense didn’t reach the endzone again, settling for field goal after field goal. Meanwhile, the Vikings scored consecutive touchdowns in the second half, with Aubrey’s second miss in between. When Prescott checked it down to Davis under heavy pressure on fourth down, only for Davis to be stopped a yard shy of the marker with five and a half minutes left in the game, it felt over.
Fast forward 10 plays, when the Vikings kicked a field goal to go up 34-23 after burning all three of the Cowboys’ timeouts and the two-minute warning, and it was as over as it could be without officially being over. Much like the Cowboys’ playoff hopes.
It was hardly a banner night for the offense, though that wasn’t the issue in this game. Scoring 26 points against the Vikings defense – while playing extended minutes without Williams out there and after losing second-string left tackle Nate Thomas for the rest of the game – is good enough to win most of the time.
In fact, the Vikings offense had scored 27+ points just four times this season coming into Sunday. A majority of the time, scoring 26 points against Flores is enough to win. All it takes is for the defense to not blow it. Yet that’s exactly what this Dallas defense did, washing away any good will they still had left from their brief post-trade-deadline surge.
Here’s the kicker (pun very much intended): had Aubrey made those two field goals, the Cowboys would’ve come away with 32 points. And while that still wouldn’t have been enough to win, it would have put them in the company of just one other team to hang that many points on the Vikings defense all year long.
That’s the story of this season, though. The offense does enough to win, and the defense does enough to lose. The only difference in this one was the odd twist of Aubrey being complicit in blowing things, too. In a way, it feels like a fitting end (though not mathematically) to the Cowboys’ playoff hopes.
