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By Bob Sturm 24m ago
At least once a year — often about this time on the calendar — I feel compelled to have the “winning talk” with the good folks who are nice enough to read my column.
The “winning talk” is pretty simple, and yet pretty disappointing to the part of the Cowboys’ fandom group that enjoys being mad at this team. They want wins, but they want them to be nice and neat with no mud on the clothing. They want utter annihilation and an enemy that taps out before the fight has begun. They don’t like the grind, the street fight, nor the grueling feeling of being stretched and contorted for three hours of internal struggle. They don’t like how long it takes to clean off the blood and dirt from the uniforms.
They don’t like how hard it is to become good.
The “winning talk” is short and sweet and it pretty much goes like this.
There is no such thing as a bad win in the NFL. We don’t apologize for wins in the NFL and we sure won’t apologize for road wins against projected playoff teams where things were a little untidy. We hunt for wins and treasure the spoils. We are proud of them and we accept them with open arms. And given how difficult it is to get them, if you want to fill your post-game hours and even the next couple days calling for firings and benchings and wish to wallow in the general malaise of Cowboys’ post-1995 misery, then the tone of my general Morning After pieces might not be for you.
But you probably need to hear the general message. It would do you good.
The Cowboys won a very difficult game Sunday in Los Angeles that also had with it some very difficult circumstances. At least, that is how things are sold around here. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t easy, but Dallas figured out a way to make that one extra play that often goes missing.
That is something to fist pump about.
If one starter is unavailable or one call is unjust, this area feels like the football gods are flat-out unfair — everyone hates the Cowboys and the revenge of the refs, the networks and every franchise is to deal a shorthand to Dallas. Adversity has been mean, but has also offered a list of excuses that are filed over and over again.
You can look at adversity in professional football in two ways.
• The first has gone on too much in this area: There is no way to win games in situations when adversity deals us a poor hand and we don’t have our “A” game and all of our guys. It serves as a convenient excuse and a cop-out to protect futures and resumes.
• The second is what I believe this tough coaching staff is attempting to convey to its 2021 roster: Adversity is everywhere and we welcome it as part of the game every week of every season. Now let’s go figure out a way to win this street fight.
Soft teams don’t accomplish anything in this league and the Cowboys’ organization has been too soft for too long. Being compared to a country club or a luxury yacht is not a flattering thing for outsiders to say. It is unlikely to produce a trophy or a parade. There was a message in the post-game from the head coach that I really liked to hear and demonstrated he knows what a trophy feels like. It emphasized that losing La’el Collins, DeMarcus Lawrence, Randy Gregory, Michael Gallup and Donovan Wilson is all too common, but also part of the sport. Heck, they had a plan to replace Collins in the offseason when they signed Ty Nsekhe only for the swing tackle to not make the trip with a heat illness of his own. Adversity had a seat on the team’s plane to Los Angeles. Maybe a few rows.
Are these the things Cowboys’ teams usually rise above? Mike McCarthy is talking like he has been through this enough to know how to handle adversity:
“Fortunately, it is normal (for us) and abnormal would not be having all of these meetings. But, change is constant in our game right now with the COVID exempts and the practice squad exempts and the conversations you have about who your 48 is going to be (that week) and I hope I don’t have too many more weeks like this week where it is constantly moving and churning. But at the end of the day that is my job and the administrative part of it. But the most important part is to make sure the players don’t see that or feel that and just keep them focused on what is in front of them.”
I feel that last vital part could use a repeat:
“The most important part is to make sure the players don’t see that or feel that and just keep them focused on what is in front of them.”
Yes. Thank you. You are allowed to keep going when you get hit in the face. You are allowed to choose to not use everything as an excuse. You are allowed to be known as a tough football team that wins ugly games when things don’t go right. In fact, every Patriots’ champion was that. Every Ravens’ team seems to be that. The Saints lived in DFW and then smoked Green Bay last week because of toughness and embracing hurricane adversity as part of the job. The tough football teams that are where Dallas wishes to arrive at in the near future have a level of shoulder shrug when another piece is taken off the table.
It doesn’t mean they will never trip and fail. It means that you aren’t going to slow them down with a flesh wound.
This Cowboys’ organization that I have been covering since 1998 has seldom seemed the toughest team to play against. They often rest on reputation, revenues and history that don’t matter to this battle and this game. You may not like the way McCarthy does things, but with Dan Quinn and McCarthy in the room, I know that the Cowboys have two coaches who have authored some tough locker rooms with the way they communicate about simple situations.
For instance, Terence Steele had to play Sunday against Joey Bosa. There is not a person on the planet who was familiar with either of them that thought this could go well for the Cowboys. And yet, this coaching staff continued to believe in Steele enough to always have a spot for him on the roster. It made many of us question the competence of the decision-makers to keep running him out there. But, if you are going to take your media guys seriously, they better admit when they are dead wrong and I was dead wrong. Steele was solid in this game and fought his tail off. Like the entire operation, I wouldn’t call his work perfect. I would call it solid, gritty and worthy of praise in a situation when they needed him to level up or the team would get rolled.
I cannot tell you how many times those situations have come up in the past where they had belief in a young player and he finally delivered enough for everyone to see that maybe these coaches are smarter regarding player development than those who write about them. Steele was instrumental in the win against an elite edge rusher and I think that needs recognition.
As does the crazy idea of playing rookie linebacker Micah Parsons out of position. This created all sorts of concerns for this scribe in that Parsons is playing his second NFL game and he is already playing a position that is difficult enough for people to sort through. To ask him to do something totally different and become an edge rusher in the NFL to try to replace a $100 million player who just broke his foot seems like an incredible stretch. By making this change, it also asked the linebackers from last season — who the Cowboys were trying to replace — to chase around Austin Ekeler, one of the tougher backs to contain in space. It sure felt that they were weakening two spots by trying this.
Again, this game is never about perfect, but when Parsons was credited with a sack that arguably saved the day (and also tested the theory that Dallas doesn’t get calls), we could quickly convert that ridiculous idea into one that had me thinking about the day rookie Magic Johnson had to play center because Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was injured in the 1980 NBA Finals. It was wildly unlikely that a kid could not only play his position well but then go play something else and instantly become the best Cowboys’ pass rusher of the day? Is this real life?
If we are going to nitpick every coach’s decision, we should offer credit when they put huge ideas on Steele and Parsons that I would have advised heavily against. Not only do they work well enough to admit that it wasn’t an absurd plan, but they both deserve as much credit in the win as almost anyone.
And then we have the late stages of the game. After a series of unfortunate events for the Chargers’ drive that appeared to have a touchdown to Jared Cook, then an offensive penalty and the Parsons’ sack, Los Angeles was no longer going for the win, but the tie at 17-17.
Dallas got the ball with a four-minute drill between them and a victory. We mentioned last Friday the Cowboys’ disconcerting record in close games. I used it as my “evidence” in picking the Chargers:
“In 17 games since the start of 2019 that have been decided by eight points or fewer (one-score games), Dallas has won just five of them (at Detroit in 2019 and Atlanta, Giants, Minnesota and San Francisco in 2020) and lost 12 — 5-12 is very, very bad. There will be close games and there will be blowouts, but if you want to compete in this league, you have to find a way or make a way. I need Dallas to show this is the type of game it is prepared to win as opposed to feeling good about a close loss.”
My friend, lifelong Chargers enthusiast and fellow media man Pat Doney of NBC 5 responded to my Friday piece with this text, “The counter to this stat: if there is a team that has been as bad or worse than DAL in close games, it’s LAC. They are 8-16 in regular-season games decided by 8 points or fewer since 2019 (24 games out of the last 33!).”
Something had to give.
Tony Pollard (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Could the Cowboys get points and eliminate the clock simultaneously? They had to be in a hurry, but not too much of one. You need points while using all four minutes. They converted a tricky third-and-6 from their own 19 to convert their third different third-and-medium on a well-executed quick pass to Ezekiel Elliott in the flat. A Pollard run later, it was the two-minute warning.
Another third-and-1 to Elliott and it was near one minute on the clock and the Cowboys still were at their own 38. Chewing up the final four minutes was no longer a problem. Getting to the outer edge of field-goal range to attempt a game-winning kick was becoming a concern. A dump down to Elliott for four yards didn’t help much. On second-and-5, Prescott threaded the needle brilliantly to Amari Cooper, who twisted and tumbled to the Chargers’ 45-yard line. The Cowboys took their second timeout with 36 seconds. Cooper was hurt on the play and didn’t return.
Prescott hit Cedrick Wilson — no Cooper or Gallup on the field — to the 41. The Chargers will not let CeeDee Lamb get open. Prescott has to figure out where to go and quickly. Pollard gets it to the 38 on a jet sweep with 33 seconds remaining.
This is where the fire-drill looked complicated — assisted by clock expert and CBS commentator Tony Romo going into his flabbergasted math class of how to best handle these situations — and confusing. Dallas did not use its final timeout and then had a personnel grouping confusion moment (remember the injuries have changed the manpower), so when it got too close for comfort, McCarthy took it all the way down to the kick.
Was it ideal? Negative. But you can see the wheels in a coach’s head turning. Would I like to have a few more yards? Yes. Would I be willing to risk a false start or a movement penalty that knocks me from the edge of field goal range to out of it? No.
While playing for a 56-yarder seems folly, we should point out that this is why Greg Zuerlein is who he is. Lots in the comments about how he looked in Tampa, but I think that is saying Steph Curry had a bad game last week in Sacramento so I am going to believe that over his full body of work. Zuerlein was signed for no other reason than he hits kicks between 55 and 60 yards more than anyone.
It really isn’t close. This is what he does. In the last decade, he is one of three kickers with at least 10 field goals made of 55-plus yards:
Zuerlein: 18 made on 56 percent
Justin Tucker: 12 made on 54 percent
Matt Prater: 11 made on 55 percent
The league average during that decade is 1.8 per kicker. Zuerlein had made 10 times that number. He is Greg the Leg.
When he drilled the kick perfectly as time expired and everyone fanned themselves, you shouldn’t be shocked because he missed a chippy in Tampa Bay. Kickers have short memories and coaches either believe in their players or they get new ones.
Romo is probably right — the operation could have been smoother. Maybe they do find a few more yards and everybody has an easier few minutes. Or maybe you take a false start and your kicking weapon never gets a chance.
The goal was to get points on that final drive and to get out of there at 1-1 with two hard-fought games that came down to the final kick. They did.
Don’t let the style points and the complaint department mislead you. Winning is hard in the NFL and there will be no apologies for outlasting your opponent in the final seconds.
The coaches of this situation trusted Steele, Parsons and Zuerlein on Sunday and those three helped deliver the first win of the season.
Never a doubt.
