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By Bob Sturm Dec 27, 2021
There used to be times around here when the local football team would ruin the holidays with incredible consistency. It was obviously unintentional, but usually from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day, the optimism train would derail and run into the side of a tunnel at such speeds that there would be no recovery. A season that built promise would then crush it in what most would claim was “the hap-happiest season of all.”
Well, for all of 2021’s warts, let this one be noted. The Cowboys will come and go in December of 2021 without so much as a blemish on their record. After a pretty rough five days in late November that included a very poor trip to Kansas City followed by an inexcusable loss on Thanksgiving against the rudderless Raiders, the Cowboys had some soul searching to do. Many teams take a while to recover from a month that also included the incredibly inept loss to Denver.
Now, before we give all credit to the Cowboys for getting mad and refusing to take it anymore, we should shout out the NFC East for helping load the schedule with plenty of incompetent opponents. The divisional records they all have against Dak Prescott-led Cowboys teams since 2016 are comically bad and show few signs of changing.
Prescott has started 30 games against the NFC East in his six seasons in Dallas. In those 30 games, the Cowboys are 24-6. That is winning at an 80 percent clip which tells you a couple things. They are 9-2 against the Giants and 6-3 against the Eagles. Those records are outstanding, but both look up at the incredible 9-1 record he holds against Washington. It is certainly not lost on anyone in Dallas that the three fan bases that talk the most noise about Prescott over the years average a single win in the six annual tries every season.
We assume there won’t be much chatting in our nation’s capital this week about Prescott’s ability to win 90 percent of his starts against their team. Instead, they will be trying to sort through the incredible side roads that their own unnamed franchise will take them on in the aftermath of this debacle. Imagine bringing in your own heated seats to the most sterilized and climate-controlled environment in all of the NFL to “troll” your opponent, thinking this might revive the Harvey Martin funeral wreath incident of 42 years ago or something. Who can say? It certainly doesn’t land very well when you allow a 42-7 halftime drubbing.
Even that was overshadowed by the in-game sideline fight where the two biggest destroyers on the Washington defensive line, Daron Payne and Jonathan Allen, turned on each other in a scuffle on those same heated benches. Payne, the Alabama teammate of Allen, stuck his finger in Allen’s cheek only to find a giant fist headed right for his face. Both remind us that brothers do fight, but I doubt they often do it on live national television while on the receiving end of a touchdown parade rarely seen.
Forgive them. They are frustrated. You would be, too, if your hated rival had just destroyed you twice in 15 days — all following the ridiculous claims by Ron Rivera that Mike McCarthy had offended him back before the first meeting by claiming he expected his team to go win in Washington. How dare he!
McCarthy has known for a while this season that he has a very impressive roster and a solid coaching staff. He is now seeing it rejuvenate itself on the low-hanging fruit of the divisional rivals who barely have a decent squad among them. With all due respect to Philadelphia — the Eagles at least appear capable of playing decent football from time to time — the NFC East is just not capable of currently threatening Dallas in terms of talent or football competence. There are many real threats to the Cowboys finishing the season with smiles on their faces — we know that. We also know that none of the threats are these time-honored divisional foes that have all had their days of greatness. Just not recently — since the Philly Special that ended the 2017 season with Nick Foles being honored in statue form outside Lincoln Financial Field.
But, Dallas has little room to talk about recent history. And that is the burden it carries on every trip it takes. The only way you eventually shed that heavy burden of over 25 years of misery is to do something about it that ends with holding the only trophy that matters. And we are finally arriving at the part of the season where we can evaluate if this could be a year when they find themselves on the path to making that happen.
Sunday night shows you why it seems they are very much in the mix. The domination of the offense returned with a massive performance that was seen with five consecutive touchdown drives in the first half. The first drive bogged a bit when the Cowboys decided to try a rugby toss that did not connect between Cedrick Wilson and Amari Cooper. It was as creative as creativity would get, but it was not as easy to execute as it surely was in practice. They punted their first drive, but that is when things started humming quite well.
The trigger for the entire performance? Wild speculation here that we will further evaluate in Decoding Kellen on Tuesday, but both of Prescott’s “get right” throws to start the night were on free plays. His hard count — something his coach was able to perfect at his other stop along the way — is not something we have seen around here too much, but when your QB is reluctant to pull the trigger into tight spaces and you want a way to build confidence, get the defense to oblige you by jumping offside. It was with 9:06 left in the first quarter on a second-and-6 play, and Prescott gave himself the risk-free authorization to gun a seam shot right into his target’s hands on a play with four vertical routes. It hit Cooper and honestly, from that point on, Prescott had his groove back.
The very next drive, they did it again. This time from 10 yards farther back near midfield. Once again, Prescott was able to change up his cadence, get the defender across the line, the ball was snapped and everyone hit the verticals. This time he fired one right onto CeeDee Lamb and while Lamb paid a price with a hit from the safety, he popped up no worse for the wear and Dallas was on the move again. Those two throws — both early in the game, but late in an offensive funk — seemed to unlock the safe for this Sunday night massacre. It was all the Cowboys needed to shift back to a time when they were so much more confident on offense.
That’s the weird part of this story, right? Seldom does a massive slump happen during an undefeated December. Yet, undeniably, Dallas has been wandering the desert a bit, looking for its offensive groove. However, it is my job to offer perspective and here it is: Despite everyone agreeing that the Cowboys have been in a slump, it must not have been very bad because after this 56-point outburst, they are once again the top-scoring team in the entire league.
Many teams would love that kind of slump.
We know there is context and concerns and nobody is trying to mitigate any of that. However, perspective doesn’t hurt to apply so that people can enjoy the journey a bit. Arizona cannot get out of its own way and as the Cardinals head to Dallas for next week’s matchup, we assume they would love to deal with a slump during an undefeated month like the Cowboys. Tampa Bay will probably figure out a way to cope with its slew of injuries, but the Buccaneers must look at Dallas’ tiny injured reserve list and marvel. Green Bay briefly had to play its fifth left tackle of the season if you include its All-Pro left tackle who has yet to play a single snap in 2021. The Packers may have the top seed for now, but they also seem to need weekly QB witchcraft to cope with their injury situations.
The general point for the Cowboys enthusiast is the reason you try to be steady at the helm is that Sunday night was a great indicator of an indisputable truth; regardless of where they end up in seeding and who the opponents turn out to be, the Cowboys have as good a chance as anyone in this NFC to represent the conference in the Super Bowl. They wake up Monday as the No. 2 seed with an 11-4 record and are in very strong health across the board with impressive depth. And yes, the defense is scary good.
Think about this, with almost no major pieces lost to injury for the year, Dallas finds itself within two weeks of the finish line having scored more points than any team, having amassed more yards than any team, and having more takeaways than any team in the NFL.
DeMarcus Lawrence (Jerome Miron / USA Today)
That is what a heavyweight contender looks like. It looks like DeMarcus Lawrence joining the team in December and basically triggering a full-level promotion from a very good defense to a borderline elite defense with his addition to the mix. Now, this will only be proven or disproven in the weeks to come because Taysom Hill and Taylor Heinicke are not built to test this theory, but the ability to add a premier edge to the Micah Parsons and Randy Gregory partnership that was already present has been stunning.
Lawrence stole the show Sunday with his pick six. This was a third-and-7 play late in the first quarter and because it is third-and-long, Lawrence is pushed inside to defensive tackle along with Dorance Armstrong. The edges then are Gregory and Chauncey Golston. That allows Parsons to lurk as a potential blitzer, but that surprise will not be revealed to the offense until the play is underway. Parsons does not blitz, but rather falls into coverage, and Lawrence also does not rush. Instead, he finds the passing lane where Jonathan Williams is running a slant, but the pass will never get that far.
Lawrence tips it in the air to himself and intercepts it, before figuring out how to grapple with Saahdiq Charles, the massive right guard for Washington and dance around him while remaining in bounds. The final 30 yards to the end zone is an obstacle course that would certainly be too much for a lesser athlete, but Lawrence navigates it all, including Heinicke firing in there like a bowling ball — which Lawrence hurdles without issue.
I’m sorry, but you don’t just add something like that to your defense in December. Often, if someone returns from injury, they have to ramp up and get acclimated and play their way back to health. Apparently, all that was done behind the scenes, because we are seeing plays each week he has been back that show he has instantly become the biggest co-problem with Parsons on the field and Dan Quinn’s tactical options have gone through the roof.
We haven’t mentioned Trevon Diggs yet and maybe that is a fault of mine because we take for granted his weekly interceptions. But, there he was again, showing why you need to stop trying him deep. His knack for finding the ball and finishing the play also speaks to the premise that the Cowboys have championship pieces on both sides of the ball.
Both sides? Don’t you mean “all three phases”? Because unlike some of their friends in the contender bin, the special teams are as advertised. Another punt block and another touchdown added on by the non-scoring portions of the roster.
McCarthy was brought here to assemble a championship team. We suspected it might take a few years for that to happen, but the roster was just needing a better mentality.
It has it now. It has the offense, defense and special teams to be listed as a legitimate contender. It has the coaching staff, too. Now, it has to show it can do it against the heavyweights with the chips all in the middle of the table. And with a strong finish and maybe a little luck, that inevitable showdown with McCarthy’s old organization could even happen in Texas. That will have to wait.
What won’t have to wait is the general acceptance from even the most cynical Cowboys enthusiast that this has a very solid and reasonable chance to be the year that they shed their burden.
Smile. Undefeated Decembers don’t happen very often around here.
