Brett's Cowboys Corner

The Cowboys return to Carolina, they played here last season as a very different team. Dallas won the game 33-10 and advanced their season to 7-3. Now in 2024, both teams will be on the brink of elimination with a loss.

A Panthers loss will eliminate them from playoff contention officially. For Dallas, a loss stacked with a Commanders win against the Saints will officially eliminate the Cowboys from playoff contention and will cause an interesting to end to the season.

Bryce Young has been playing at a higher level since the Berlin game against NYG. Which is great considering he was benched by Carolina in week 3. Last year, Young against Dallas threw 123 yards, 1 TD, and 1 INT to DaRon Bland for a touchdown.

• Rico Dowdle has played great in the last few games, he’s on a contract year and needs to continue his play to try and get himself a roster spot next season.
• Mingo’s revenge game after being traded away from Carolina earlier this season.
• With the injury to Diggs, Bland will move back to the CB1 role, and will have the match-up with Xavier Legette this week, one of the premier Carolina receivers.

• Chuba will have an opportunity to dominate this game, and play about 75% of the snaps this week.
• Thielen coming off his injury will look to dominate the slot, and will have a tough match-up against Jourdan Lewis, who has played good nickel this season.
• Clowney has generated the most pressures for the Panthers, might be the only defensive player that you need to worry about this week.

1 – Play Good Run Defense.

When the Panthers and Chuba Hubbard match-up with poor run defenses, they tend to dominate. Hubbard averages 5 yards a carry against bottom of the league run defenses this season.

The Cowboys have had games where they have held up as average run defenses, but also have seen some running backs like Henry and Mixon absolutely shred their defense.

1k rushing yards on the year, the Panthers are not afraid to commit to the running game. Teams like the Bengals and Commanders did not look toward their backs to dominate as much as they could have. Carolina will keep pounding it though.

2 – Attack D-Line.

The Panthers don’t sack anyone much nor get a lot of pressures. Nobody faces more rushing attempts and yards on the ground than Carolina.

This could be a great feature of two backs with Hubbard vs. Dowdle. A running back match-up. Rico Dowdle has carried the ball 40 times for a league-high 243 yards and a touchdown over the past two weeks.

Should be a week that your offensive line can have some work against a line that they are better than.

3 – A Few Big Plays.

Throwing to the opposite side of Jaycee Horn will be the best plan of attack for Dallas. There isn’t much coverage past him for the Carolina secondary.

The Panthers are not a high scoring team and can be killed by a few big plays, the Cowboys have some homerun hitters like KaVontae Turpin or Brandin Cooks from the 2nd and 3rd receiver slots. Of course you can move Lamb around and get him going.

It would be fun to see Johnathan Mingo to have a break through game this week, against his former team. As the Cowboys made the trade for Mingo at the deadline this year.

4 – Find The Offensive Lines Holes.

The Carolina offensive line has had its problems throughout the season and has forced Bryce Young to run around for his life.

The group is a bit slow footed in pass protection, and the teams that have success against them have shown speed and confused them with gap exchanges. They will just bust the blocking assignments.

You will have to keep eyes over top for Bryce Young as he is becoming a more willing runner, generally only when he has to.