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Morning After Week 15 - Cowboys Dominant
The Cowboys beat up the Panthers offense all day and cruised to a very easy victory.
Bob Sturm
Dec 16, 2024
Imagine this game in a vacuum, where you needed a win to remain on top of the NFC East and had to go destroy someone in your way.
Imagine the idea that you are playing your best football as December gets to the good part.
There is definitely a parallel universe where yesterday’s win, combined with the last month of Cowboys football, would have people buzzing. Perhaps they would be wondering if this might be the year Dallas changes the path of its franchise. Based on how they are getting after the passers and punishing teams with a destructive ground game that travels well as temperatures drop, they are looking playoff-ready. Maybe this is the year they can string some January wins together and change the entire narrative.
In that parallel universe, the season did not effectively end in October.
But it did, and so trying to put the events of a Week 15 pounding of the Carolina Panthers, 30-14, in Charlotte on Sunday into proper perspective is either really easy (it doesn’t matter because both teams weren’t going anywhere) or really difficult (we are seeing signs of a potential future where Dallas looks a bit physically imposing up front again on both sides of the ball).
Yet, beating the New York Giants and Carolina Panthers silly is probably not a test that reveals too terribly much when it comes to this sort of evaluation. Even in stretches where we suggest they are playing better, they still are not close to being competitive football organizations right now. Jumping to any conclusion because you beat these teams is hardly strong evidence of a full revival forthcoming.
The truth is that the Cowboys are a very flawed football team that has started to figure out ways around many – but not close to all – of their flaws over the course of a year. We know this is how every season should go because it is a long journey of development, and veteran coaches who have seen it all are pretty tireless in trying to sort problems. In a normal campaign, hopefully, you would use the first half of the season, pre-Halloween or so, figuring out what you have to work with as a football team and the second half of the year attempting to become the very best version of whatever that might be.
The problem in 2024, of course, is that the pre-Halloween portion was so bad in so many ways that the second half of the season was irrelevant. They played themselves out of any competitive opportunity, and that rendered what we have been watching over the last month pretty pointless to those legions of Cowboys fans who have “had it with everything around here.” Hey, we get it.
But since many of us are too invested to turn away, I thought I would share my observations on what we are seeing over the last several weeks that at least can trigger some interesting discussions about what it all is starting to mean.
The big one is simple. Micah Parsons is back and healthy on one side of the ball, and CeeDee Lamb is playing hurt on the other, and they are both at the top of their craft. Both were the result of some draft day good fortune, and both have become elite NFL stars. When you have a difference-maker on each side of the ball, you have a chance to wreck any game on your schedule. Now that they are both out there and performing, I think they are offering some of their very best work. There is your hope for the future and your foundation upon which to build. I never doubted the ability of either player, but I did wonder whether either could begin to become the man in the room as a leader and thermostat for the Cowboys. Even this season, there were body language signs that made us wonder what was important to them as professionals. Would they move from talented individuals to potential icons who made it their one career goal to restore the championship tradition to the Dallas Cowboys at all costs? Could they become the heroes that carved their own history?
None of us knows, but both are playing every week like these games mean plenty to them, and the younger guys are watching. They are taking notes and following them into battle, and I believe that all matters. You set the tone with your actions once you get that status. You want culture and leadership on your franchise? A coach can only do so much at this level if you have bad or indifferent leaders as your top earners. I have no problem paying CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons if I know that there is nothing more important on their minds than being the core guys who built their career journeys together and took it all the way to the top while wearing the Star. That definitely won’t happen in 2024, and the shame of this period of Cowboys football might be that the franchise has two superstars who are playing superstar-level football at premium positions and are definitely “wasting their primes.” The type of impact Lamb and Parsons have on games was seen again on Sunday. They affect everything on their side of the ball and are always standouts.
Parsons and the pass rush were ridiculous. I previewed the game by offering reports from Carolina about the improved offense for Bryce Young and friends, but some of you must be thinking I was crazy because Young did not look like progress was being made, just judging from this game.
He was rattled, running for his life, and being pounded. Six sacks and four takeaways for the Cowboys defense were enough to win the game on their own. It was awesome stuff, and when you are hitting the QB that many times and getting much of it done without blitzing – five of the six sacks came on standard four-man pressures – then you are not going to have many issues most weeks. And it was not just Micah Parsons at all. Other members of that 2021 draft class – both of whom are about to be unrestricted free agents in Osa Odighizuwa and Chauncey Golston – were destructive as they have been all season. Finally, Carl Lawson – a guy who might not even be here if it weren’t for the Sam Williams injury – has really settled in and helped things quite a bit since DeMarcus Lawrence and Marshawn Kneeland were lost. Lawson had a sack again in this one as he was on it all day. Those four players (Parsons, Osa, Golston, and Lawson) combined for 19 of the Cowboys' 20 pressures on the day and were the story. It was the third time this year Dallas hit six sacks, and to nobody’s surprise, they are 3-0 in those games against Cleveland, the Giants, and now the Panthers.
Of course, the sacks then lead to takeaways, and when Carolina offers four of them – generously offering one turnover in each of the four quarters yesterday – then this game is going to be a laugher by midway through the third quarter.
I am sure you are wondering what sort of record a Cowboys team would have if they get six sacks and four takeaways in the same game, right?
I know I did, and this is what those Stathead.com searches are all about. I found this pretty interesting as this is the first time in 20 years they had a 6/4 defensive game.
All-time Dallas is 19-1 when these games happen with six sacks and four takeaways. I think what we should remember when we look a these lists is that turnovers are down so much that four takeaways in a game are rare. Also, quick passing attacks keep six sack games happening and nobody wants their QB to take that punishment. So, everything in football is designed to not allow these to happen and as you can see, there was only one other Cowboys game like this since 1996!
And that game is also special for being the only NFL start of Drew Henson’s career on Thanksgiving Day of 2004 (a game he would be pulled from at halftime). I also have questions about how you can lose a game like this, but apparently Washington beat them in 1965 in a rough one.
Regardless, since Micah Parsons has returned, we now see the effects for all involved. The Cowboys pass rush is a problem for about six straight weeks now and Golston and Odighizuwa have been great, too. But, yeah, they all are going to need some contracts if you want to keep them.
Let’s switch to the offense. Most notably for me, and I will always start with this because I believe it is the only healthy way to play offensive football, the Cowboys have broken through on running the ball into defenses that are geared up to stop it and Dallas is having success. In Week 11, the Cowboys played Houston on Monday Night and could not run the ball at all.
It would be the sixth time out of the first ten games where they would run for 80 yards or less and the runs were often demoralizing and would doom the rest of the drive. The NFL average is about 115 yards rushing per game on the ground and only once in the first ten weeks of 2024 did Dallas surpass that modest number (At Atlanta was that game and it featured the long Dak Prescott runs that might have injured him and also the healthy-scratching of Ezekiel Elliott who wasn’t even on the trip).
So, you cannot run the ball and then you lose your QB so you cannot pass the ball, either.
Dallas was the averaging a putrid 83 yards per game rushing through that Texans game, but also was now relying on an extremely limited passing game because the drop-off from Dak Prescott to any other QB on their roster remains profound. Cooper Rush knows the offense, but your play-book is smaller than a pamphlet when you start taking away everything that is a bad idea with your personnel. The Eagles and Texans had the times of their lives coming to Arlington under these circumstances.
Dallas could not run at all, so they tried to use their passing game as a substitution with underneath routes that would happen quick. With a back-up QB who cannot do much down the field that requires velocity or strength, you are trying to run a passing offense with no verticality. You are pretty much doomed. The temporary solution, which ended up resulting in a season-high 56 passing attempts for Cooper Rush, was not a solution at all. They were going to need to play almost half of their season without Prescott and simultaneously having a rushing game so poor that you tried to have Rush throw the ball over 60 times.
But, to the credit of all involved, the last month has shown us a running game that has now had four consecutive games of improvement. 91 yards in Washington for the running game is only a slight uptick. Then 122 on Thanksgiving against the Giants. 156 yards on Monday against the Bengals and yesterday, 211 yards rushing versus Carolina.
211? That is worthy of some notice because this organization has not had a 200-yard rushing day in over two years. They have had only two such other occasions in five years of Mike McCarthy football – something once known for the determination to establish the run.
We have talked a lot about Rico Dowdle, but what feels great about this work up front would have to be that the offensive line and blocking unit feels to not be relying on any one player, but the growth is starting to feel like the group has figured something out.
The offensive line has lost Zack Martin, Cooper Beebe, and has played eleven different combinations up front. Yet, they now seem to be expecting to find seven or eight yards when they run the ball on 1st and 10 in a likely run situation. Early in the season when they would find a decent run, it always felt like a gimmick on a jet sweep or reverse. It all counts, but everyone seemed to know that Dallas had no running game so they were making things up on the fly. And this issue did not just start this year. You could argue the actual power run game, where the opponent knows you want to run it and prepare accordingly, but you keep gashing them with body blows, has been missing for several years since Zeke was a younger version of himself and the boys up front were feared throughout the league for leaning on you all day.
Now, every combination up front is moving forward and looking like they have come a long way since September. They ran the ball right at Carolina and controlled the game. And when you run at people, they don’t rush the passer. Part of that is exhaustion and part of that is not knowing if you are going to run or pass. It keeps everyone honest and everything works because of it.
But, why is it working now? Well, the honest truth is that they have strung four defenses together on their schedule that are not very good. The schedule has definitely given the Cowboys several opponents in a row that don’t defense well at all, so we should probably recognize that Carolina is about to set the record for this era as the worst run defense since before the year 2000. They are very poor at defending and are without any elite personnel.
That is a long way to go to tell you how I felt about yesterday. Yes, the inexplicable Cooper Rush fumble and the subsequent one-play 83-yard Panthers touchdown was the unintentional comedy that 2024 has offered and probably deserved more of my attention.
But, for me, I am looking for big trends that offer hope to a reasonable future.
If this team keeps running the ball like this on offense and showing a pass rush like that on defense, there is plenty to latch onto. They need to show it for three more games, preferably, but if you have those things and you have top players taking things personally, you have something to wonder about.
And frankly, we probably need to take what we can get from this year. Because overall, it is still a pretty big mess. But, I don’t want to lose sight of the progress the last month has brought. They do appear to have some footing again and are continuing to work hard and to play like it matters to them. These are obviously much smaller prizes, but sometimes that is all you can reach.
The Cowboys beat up the Panthers offense all day and cruised to a very easy victory.
Bob Sturm
Dec 16, 2024
Imagine this game in a vacuum, where you needed a win to remain on top of the NFC East and had to go destroy someone in your way.
Imagine the idea that you are playing your best football as December gets to the good part.
There is definitely a parallel universe where yesterday’s win, combined with the last month of Cowboys football, would have people buzzing. Perhaps they would be wondering if this might be the year Dallas changes the path of its franchise. Based on how they are getting after the passers and punishing teams with a destructive ground game that travels well as temperatures drop, they are looking playoff-ready. Maybe this is the year they can string some January wins together and change the entire narrative.
In that parallel universe, the season did not effectively end in October.
But it did, and so trying to put the events of a Week 15 pounding of the Carolina Panthers, 30-14, in Charlotte on Sunday into proper perspective is either really easy (it doesn’t matter because both teams weren’t going anywhere) or really difficult (we are seeing signs of a potential future where Dallas looks a bit physically imposing up front again on both sides of the ball).
Yet, beating the New York Giants and Carolina Panthers silly is probably not a test that reveals too terribly much when it comes to this sort of evaluation. Even in stretches where we suggest they are playing better, they still are not close to being competitive football organizations right now. Jumping to any conclusion because you beat these teams is hardly strong evidence of a full revival forthcoming.
The truth is that the Cowboys are a very flawed football team that has started to figure out ways around many – but not close to all – of their flaws over the course of a year. We know this is how every season should go because it is a long journey of development, and veteran coaches who have seen it all are pretty tireless in trying to sort problems. In a normal campaign, hopefully, you would use the first half of the season, pre-Halloween or so, figuring out what you have to work with as a football team and the second half of the year attempting to become the very best version of whatever that might be.
The problem in 2024, of course, is that the pre-Halloween portion was so bad in so many ways that the second half of the season was irrelevant. They played themselves out of any competitive opportunity, and that rendered what we have been watching over the last month pretty pointless to those legions of Cowboys fans who have “had it with everything around here.” Hey, we get it.
But since many of us are too invested to turn away, I thought I would share my observations on what we are seeing over the last several weeks that at least can trigger some interesting discussions about what it all is starting to mean.
The big one is simple. Micah Parsons is back and healthy on one side of the ball, and CeeDee Lamb is playing hurt on the other, and they are both at the top of their craft. Both were the result of some draft day good fortune, and both have become elite NFL stars. When you have a difference-maker on each side of the ball, you have a chance to wreck any game on your schedule. Now that they are both out there and performing, I think they are offering some of their very best work. There is your hope for the future and your foundation upon which to build. I never doubted the ability of either player, but I did wonder whether either could begin to become the man in the room as a leader and thermostat for the Cowboys. Even this season, there were body language signs that made us wonder what was important to them as professionals. Would they move from talented individuals to potential icons who made it their one career goal to restore the championship tradition to the Dallas Cowboys at all costs? Could they become the heroes that carved their own history?
None of us knows, but both are playing every week like these games mean plenty to them, and the younger guys are watching. They are taking notes and following them into battle, and I believe that all matters. You set the tone with your actions once you get that status. You want culture and leadership on your franchise? A coach can only do so much at this level if you have bad or indifferent leaders as your top earners. I have no problem paying CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons if I know that there is nothing more important on their minds than being the core guys who built their career journeys together and took it all the way to the top while wearing the Star. That definitely won’t happen in 2024, and the shame of this period of Cowboys football might be that the franchise has two superstars who are playing superstar-level football at premium positions and are definitely “wasting their primes.” The type of impact Lamb and Parsons have on games was seen again on Sunday. They affect everything on their side of the ball and are always standouts.
Parsons and the pass rush were ridiculous. I previewed the game by offering reports from Carolina about the improved offense for Bryce Young and friends, but some of you must be thinking I was crazy because Young did not look like progress was being made, just judging from this game.
He was rattled, running for his life, and being pounded. Six sacks and four takeaways for the Cowboys defense were enough to win the game on their own. It was awesome stuff, and when you are hitting the QB that many times and getting much of it done without blitzing – five of the six sacks came on standard four-man pressures – then you are not going to have many issues most weeks. And it was not just Micah Parsons at all. Other members of that 2021 draft class – both of whom are about to be unrestricted free agents in Osa Odighizuwa and Chauncey Golston – were destructive as they have been all season. Finally, Carl Lawson – a guy who might not even be here if it weren’t for the Sam Williams injury – has really settled in and helped things quite a bit since DeMarcus Lawrence and Marshawn Kneeland were lost. Lawson had a sack again in this one as he was on it all day. Those four players (Parsons, Osa, Golston, and Lawson) combined for 19 of the Cowboys' 20 pressures on the day and were the story. It was the third time this year Dallas hit six sacks, and to nobody’s surprise, they are 3-0 in those games against Cleveland, the Giants, and now the Panthers.
Of course, the sacks then lead to takeaways, and when Carolina offers four of them – generously offering one turnover in each of the four quarters yesterday – then this game is going to be a laugher by midway through the third quarter.
I am sure you are wondering what sort of record a Cowboys team would have if they get six sacks and four takeaways in the same game, right?
I know I did, and this is what those Stathead.com searches are all about. I found this pretty interesting as this is the first time in 20 years they had a 6/4 defensive game.
All-time Dallas is 19-1 when these games happen with six sacks and four takeaways. I think what we should remember when we look a these lists is that turnovers are down so much that four takeaways in a game are rare. Also, quick passing attacks keep six sack games happening and nobody wants their QB to take that punishment. So, everything in football is designed to not allow these to happen and as you can see, there was only one other Cowboys game like this since 1996!
And that game is also special for being the only NFL start of Drew Henson’s career on Thanksgiving Day of 2004 (a game he would be pulled from at halftime). I also have questions about how you can lose a game like this, but apparently Washington beat them in 1965 in a rough one.
Regardless, since Micah Parsons has returned, we now see the effects for all involved. The Cowboys pass rush is a problem for about six straight weeks now and Golston and Odighizuwa have been great, too. But, yeah, they all are going to need some contracts if you want to keep them.
Let’s switch to the offense. Most notably for me, and I will always start with this because I believe it is the only healthy way to play offensive football, the Cowboys have broken through on running the ball into defenses that are geared up to stop it and Dallas is having success. In Week 11, the Cowboys played Houston on Monday Night and could not run the ball at all.
It would be the sixth time out of the first ten games where they would run for 80 yards or less and the runs were often demoralizing and would doom the rest of the drive. The NFL average is about 115 yards rushing per game on the ground and only once in the first ten weeks of 2024 did Dallas surpass that modest number (At Atlanta was that game and it featured the long Dak Prescott runs that might have injured him and also the healthy-scratching of Ezekiel Elliott who wasn’t even on the trip).
So, you cannot run the ball and then you lose your QB so you cannot pass the ball, either.
Dallas was the averaging a putrid 83 yards per game rushing through that Texans game, but also was now relying on an extremely limited passing game because the drop-off from Dak Prescott to any other QB on their roster remains profound. Cooper Rush knows the offense, but your play-book is smaller than a pamphlet when you start taking away everything that is a bad idea with your personnel. The Eagles and Texans had the times of their lives coming to Arlington under these circumstances.
Dallas could not run at all, so they tried to use their passing game as a substitution with underneath routes that would happen quick. With a back-up QB who cannot do much down the field that requires velocity or strength, you are trying to run a passing offense with no verticality. You are pretty much doomed. The temporary solution, which ended up resulting in a season-high 56 passing attempts for Cooper Rush, was not a solution at all. They were going to need to play almost half of their season without Prescott and simultaneously having a rushing game so poor that you tried to have Rush throw the ball over 60 times.
But, to the credit of all involved, the last month has shown us a running game that has now had four consecutive games of improvement. 91 yards in Washington for the running game is only a slight uptick. Then 122 on Thanksgiving against the Giants. 156 yards on Monday against the Bengals and yesterday, 211 yards rushing versus Carolina.
211? That is worthy of some notice because this organization has not had a 200-yard rushing day in over two years. They have had only two such other occasions in five years of Mike McCarthy football – something once known for the determination to establish the run.
We have talked a lot about Rico Dowdle, but what feels great about this work up front would have to be that the offensive line and blocking unit feels to not be relying on any one player, but the growth is starting to feel like the group has figured something out.
The offensive line has lost Zack Martin, Cooper Beebe, and has played eleven different combinations up front. Yet, they now seem to be expecting to find seven or eight yards when they run the ball on 1st and 10 in a likely run situation. Early in the season when they would find a decent run, it always felt like a gimmick on a jet sweep or reverse. It all counts, but everyone seemed to know that Dallas had no running game so they were making things up on the fly. And this issue did not just start this year. You could argue the actual power run game, where the opponent knows you want to run it and prepare accordingly, but you keep gashing them with body blows, has been missing for several years since Zeke was a younger version of himself and the boys up front were feared throughout the league for leaning on you all day.
Now, every combination up front is moving forward and looking like they have come a long way since September. They ran the ball right at Carolina and controlled the game. And when you run at people, they don’t rush the passer. Part of that is exhaustion and part of that is not knowing if you are going to run or pass. It keeps everyone honest and everything works because of it.
But, why is it working now? Well, the honest truth is that they have strung four defenses together on their schedule that are not very good. The schedule has definitely given the Cowboys several opponents in a row that don’t defense well at all, so we should probably recognize that Carolina is about to set the record for this era as the worst run defense since before the year 2000. They are very poor at defending and are without any elite personnel.
That is a long way to go to tell you how I felt about yesterday. Yes, the inexplicable Cooper Rush fumble and the subsequent one-play 83-yard Panthers touchdown was the unintentional comedy that 2024 has offered and probably deserved more of my attention.
But, for me, I am looking for big trends that offer hope to a reasonable future.
If this team keeps running the ball like this on offense and showing a pass rush like that on defense, there is plenty to latch onto. They need to show it for three more games, preferably, but if you have those things and you have top players taking things personally, you have something to wonder about.
And frankly, we probably need to take what we can get from this year. Because overall, it is still a pretty big mess. But, I don’t want to lose sight of the progress the last month has brought. They do appear to have some footing again and are continuing to work hard and to play like it matters to them. These are obviously much smaller prizes, but sometimes that is all you can reach.
