Brett's Cowboys Corner

It will be the third straight loss for the Dallas Cowboys, 2019 was the last time a Dak Prescott led team dropped three straight, it happened twice that season.

Dallas created pressure and didn’t allow the rushing attack to dominate them. So what went wrong? Well it seemed the Cowboys couldn’t get out of their own way.

A lot of unforced errors, miscommunication on assignments and just not being prepared for certain situations.

But let’s start happy, and get into the only good thing from Sunday:

The Front Seven Came to Play

Osa Odighizuwa generated a team-high 7 pressures on 22 pass rushes, the most by any Cowboys defender in a game since Week 1. The defensive line got into the face of Kirk Cousins and forced some throws, it was the secondary that gave up big plays.

Carl Lawson stepped up with two big sacks, one leading to a forced fumble where the Cowboys would eventually turn it back over.

As Cousins was under pressure, he was able to throw it up and find receivers wide open. Usually due to miscommunication.

Here is the 4th and 3 play that led to a Darnell Mooney touchdown. It is a bunch formation at the top, Carson and Lewis are pressed close to the receivers, London and McCloud.

Diggs who is highlighted is playing off coverage, and its key to look at where he initially lines up to where he ends up before the pass is delivered to Mooney.

Diggs who started in off coverage runs down and gets caught up in the swarm of other routes, that are essentially decoy pick routes that looked to get this exact result. But Diggs started 7 yards behind the line, why didn’t he just run over top and get to Mooney…instead of crashing down and racing towards him.

Mooney makes the catch in open field, and Diggs is looking back at the Ref waving his arms for a flag.

The toughest part of this play, it should of went wrong for Atlanta. The Cowboys applied great pressure and Kirk had to force the ball out. But the throw didn’t need to be perfect as there was no defender insight.

There were plenty of other head scratching plays for the Dallas secondary. Donovan Wilson had a few in coverage, and it is tough with a rookie corner back out there.

But at least the defense did not lose to the running game this week!

The Offense Can’t Get The Basics Right

It gets very frustrating when Coach McCarthy tells us every week for 4 years that we need to clean up the penalties…but somehow we don’t. Wonder who that’s an indictment on.

Tyler Guyton and others had a bunch of penalties tonight that effectively stalled some promising drives. 12-men in the huddle on a critical 4th down while trailing 21-10 in the 3rd quarter. Not knowing the play call. You can go to The Star in Frisco and watch a High School football game, and not see dumb errors like that.

Another big problem with the offense, you have no good ‘go to’ plays in critical situations. It looks like you are just trying stuff. In the 2nd quarter down 4 points, good looking drive. You end up in a tough 4th and 1, and you run a jet sweep to Lamb that gets blown up, which the same play was ran later, a way McCarthy could show that it does work. To open the 2nd half, you fake a punt.

4 times the Cowboys had a turnover on downs.

An ugly 3-13 on third down attempts. Two of those successes came on the final Cooper Rush drive in the 4th quarter. 1-7 in attempts while Dak Prescott was running the offense. In all the pass attempts on 3rd down, not one ball went beyond the sticks. Meaning he threw it short of the first down marker on every attempt. The only successful conversion was a 3rd and 5 handoff to Hunter Luepke, something they did last week unsuccessfully, that was criticized.

As for the offensive line. They haven’t played well. Instead of writing 1,000 words on their play, allow this photo to tell the story.

What’s Going On For The Running Backs?

At least you figured out that Rico Dowdle is a good back (who knew) and he can be reliable to establish a run game, if you actually commit to it.

Dalvin Cook should be a rotational piece, he needs more practice reps. He has already shown improvement in blitz pick up. It is very clear that he wasn’t getting meaningful practice reps this season, until now.

As for Ezekiel Elliott, well..

Oh if you are concerned don’t worry. Your GM just confirmed this to be true, but spent most of the time speaking on how great a leader Zeke has been and is someone the Cowboys want to have around.

Dak Prescott Injury

An injury to your starting quarterback. Man how bad of a team do you have to be that a injury to QB1 gets buried this far down the game report.

Dak pulled his hamstring in the end of the 3rd quarter and did not return to the game. After the game he spoke with the media, “Pulled something… it’s very difficult… I wanted to go out there, I wanted to go out there and fight… I felt something I’ve never felt (before) and it was tough to walk…(but) it’ll take a lot for me to not be out there (next week).”

Dak is a tough competitor and to no surprise, he says that he will give it a go next week. But with that kind of injury it can linger, and it can be difficult to set you feet to throw with a pulled hamstring. With this terrible oline, you may not want to be back there.

This could all heal up and be a non-story going against Philly, or it could linger and be a multiple week problem. Stephen Jones mentioned on the radio that they liked what they saw from Cooper Rush in Atlanta, if Dak couldn’t go next week. Also mentioning the possibility of Trey Lance stepping in.

The Trade Deadline

November 5th, 3pm CST.

Teams will make some big moves to save their seasons and bring in the last piece of the puzzle to make that playoff run.

Cowboys made a great trade at the deadline for Amari Cooper in 2018. Turning a 3-3 team into a playoff team, finishing the season 10-6. Otherwise the Cowboys are non-factors at the deadline.

Will the Cowboys make a move?

No.

Not to acquire any players at least. There are too many holes on this roster, and you are too far from being a playoff team let alone a contender.

It would be absolutely insane for Dallas to trade away draft capital at this point. What would be the genius roster building move (which also means it won’t happen) is to find some expiring contracts on your team and look to trade those guys to contenders, who will overpay draft capital in return.

Someone tell Jerry he can do the Herschel Walker again! Now you may not have anyone as valuable as Herschel this time (well there is one guy…but I don’t want to end up on a podcast) but you have several contracts that you probably can’t afford anyways. Get more darts for the draft board!