“Football” fans in Rio de Janiero, Brazil are certainly used to games coming down to exciting kicks. When it came to the American football game between the Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens played there on Sunday, the home team Cowboys will be regretting opportunities to win it before it ever came down to Tyler Loop’s 56-yard field goal on the last snap of the game.
We say all the time that games must be won and lost in the NFL with your best players on the field, and the Cowboys had a golden opportunity
to do so with Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and George Pickens moving the offense downfield for a 1st-and-goal at the two-yard line with 23 seconds left, down by three.
A Dallas team that previously led 10-0 in the first quarter but needed to rally back from trailing Baltimore 24-13 late in the third quarter, failed to win the game with their self-proclaimed “greatest offense there is” poised to do so from the goal line. They did manage to leave just seven seconds for the Ravens to work with in a tie game.
Lamar Jackson and Zay Flowers took that seven seconds against a Cowboys defense down to backup players in the secondary, and set up the winning field goal.
Jackson had a clean pocket to hit Flowers for a 27-yard gain down the middle with one second left to call a timeout, and out trotted Loop to break the heart of Cowboys nation.
The Cowboys are now 1-2 for the third season in a row, and will prepare for an in-state battle against the Houston Texans, who also have some soul-searching to do after falling to 0-3 on Sunday as well.
Let’s get to some notes on a wild back-and-forth affair between the Cowboys and Ravens in Brazil.
In our weekly look at what the Cowboys most needed to do to win this game, we put the focus on the interior defensive line needing to finally step up, as well as the offensive line getting movement in the run game. Like literally everything in this loss, there were good and bad things that flipped and flopped back and forth for 60 minutes.
Quinnen Williams asserted himself into the game on the very first drive by pressuring Jackson right in his face, forcing a sailed pass beyond Mark Andrews’ reach, despite him being wide open. Unfortunately, the relationship between these splash plays up front and how they correlated to a depleted Cowboys secondary being able to hold up enough did not translate enough for a win. The glaring missing piece was a consistent threat off the edge to support a strong effort from the interior defenders up front, and in particular Rashan Gary really struggled.
Dallas lost the big-play differential thanks in large part to being gashed way too much in the secondary. For much of the afternoon, chunk plays came almost effortlessly for the Ravens, while the Cowboys had a hard time pushing the ball downfield.
The Cowboys should have came away with more points early as they got downfield with Javonte Williams getting loose the best he had all season. An incomplete play-action pass on 2nd-and-goal killed the momentum of the drive followed by a third-down sack and the team had to settle for three.
There were other instances of the defense rising to the occasion situationally that shouldn’t be completely forgotten about. Quinnen Williams again had penetration that led to a Jaishawn Barham tackle for loss on the Ravens drive immediately following the Cowboys taking a 3-0 lead.
The Williams and Barham play led to Caleb Downs swarming off the edge to get in on a short-yardage fourth down stop of Derrick Henry, which was easily the moment of the season up to that point for Christian Parker’s defense. Dallas took this short-field possession right down the field again and this time got Williams into the end zone for six, jumping ahead 10-0.
Dallas rallying back from down 24-13 to lead 28-24 also came off a short-yardage stop. The Ravens answered a scoring drive capped off by Ferguson’s touchdown and Lamb’s two-point conversion with a quick strike drive that saw three explosive plays of at least 20 yards, but got denied in short-yardage again.
On 4th-and-goal from the one, Kenny Clark won as the low man at the point of attack, and Barham shot through the gap like a cannon to make the tackle on Henry. The Cowboys even flipped the script on making big plays for skill players looking easy to cap this go-ahead drive, as KaVontae Turpin found plenty of room to run after the Ravens motioned late to a two-high shell look on his jet sweep attempt.
The Cowboys offense has gotten better out of condensed formations after being too spread out and ineffective in week one at the Giants, but still lack the physical identity which other teams that major in these formations have. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing if the Cowboys still play to the skills of their players, but with Ferguson off a two touchdown game versus the Commanders, his opportunities to stretch the field against the Ravens were shrunk.
Brian Schottenheimer did not have the best feel for this game as play-caller. The best things the Cowboys will be able to take from this game in spite of all this offensively was their push in the run game, as well as the way they forced the Ravens to play two-high safety looks, and took advantage of them. The Ravens played with clear respect for the dynamic ability of both Lamb and Pickens, which was on display enough for the Cowboys to win this game, yet there was still a steady dose of throws behind the line of scrimmage that didn’t work, screens, and other ineffective plays that become more memorable in a bad loss instead.
Flipping the good/bad coin yet again to this point though, the Cowboys were denied any opportunity to run the ball after first down in their final possession after Luke Schoonmaker’s false start penalty. The passing game did have some more room to work on 2nd-and-goal from the seven, and drew another one of these shell looks, but nobody got open and Prescott scrambled for a short gain.
Then came the third down chance that was never really a chance for George Pickens, with Prescott and Schottenheimer revealing after the game the ball was apparently supposed to be thrown away there given the Ravens look, although Pickens was open.
The defense made enough splash plays in this game to expect an offense with this much talent to capitalize on the situations it was handed. It’s still hard to fathom the Cowboys offense didn’t pass the test – losing to a Jesse Minter defense for the second year in a row.
The final play before the game-winning FG put the worst possible cap on this being a coaching loss for the Cowboys, as they were willing to go through the growing pains of a new defensive scheme at the start of this season under Parker. With that said, the bread and butter for Parker’s scheme is supposed to be an umbrella style zone.
New Sunday Night Football analyst Mike Tomlin even said at halftime of Rams at Broncos that he would expect any defense to be in an umbrella in that situation. Instead, the Cowboys inexplicably played man-to-man, didn’t get a pass rush, and saw Flowers get inside of Reddy Steward for the decisive blow.
This was also one final field position win for the Ravens. The Cowboys did not trust Brandon Aubrey to keep the ball in the field of play on a “dirty kick” after having two kickoffs go out of bounds earlier in the game. Aubrey kicked a touchback instead, starting Baltimore at their 35-yard line, while no time also came off the clock on the kickoff.
It is hard to remember any other recent Cowboys loss where all three phases of offense, defense, and special teams had clear-as-day moments that greatly contributed to losing the game. To make matters more muddy, we’ve covered positives in all three phases as well, but add it all up and it’s hard to keep this game out of the “same old Cowboys in crunch time” folder, the only exception being also paying the cost for a slew of unproven coaches right now – Schottenheimer included after his hand in this one.
The Cowboys staff tried to make this Brazil game a business-focused trip, looking for the franchise’s first win over the Ravens in a decade. They’ll now have to face a locker room of players that collectively made a lot of plays in this game, but weren’t put in the best position to win and let a truly wild game get away.
This one-score loss will force the Cowboys to speed up some of this adjusting to new personnel, adopt a sense of urgency that could make it even harder to put the offense in the absolute best situations, and spend the week answering to a laundry list of mistakes that were made in Brazil. It feels like the next game can’t get here soon enough, but when it does Dallas will need to be ready for an opponent that will also be desperate.
