4 things the Cowboys should do to beat the Eagles

Well hello there. I’m Dave Mangels from Bleeding Green Nation. No, I didn’t get lost. As many already know, this week across SB Nation we are having writers cross enemy lines. RJ Ochoa, who is secretly, or maybe not so secretly an Eagles fan, came over to BGN, and Brandon Gowton popped over here.

Then on Thursday David Halprin came over to our turf and wrote about 4 things the Eagles should do to beat the Cowboys. Turnabout is fair play, so we sent our Dave–hey wait, that’s me–to highlight 4 things the Cowboys should do to beat the Eagles.

The Eagles are due a loss. A bad loss. They’ve been outgained in eight of their games. The biggest plays AJ Brown has made this year have been on social media. The head vibes coach has seen two players retire shortly after joining the team, and they dragged another guy out of retirement to help the locker room vibes. Two weeks ago in a close prime time game they pooped their pants in late game management, and then the next week they did it again. Things are going great.

The Cowboys can win this game. Everyone the Eagles have faced can beat them. Every game that the Eagles have played this season that wasn’t against the Giants has been a one score game.

Play with pace

Despite having a Goliath team, the Eagles play a David strategy of shortening the game. Every Eagles drive feels like they’re trying to kill the clock with a 4 point lead at the end of the game. The Eagles are 25th in plays per drive, and 22nd in points per drive. The coaches have made a conscious choice to play as few plays as possible despite having a talent advantage. A team with the offensive firepower that the Eagles have should be playing at a higher pace and creating more, not fewer, opportunities.

The Cowboys can’t do anything to make the Eagles offense play at tempo. But if the Cowboys offense plays with tempo all game long, they can create an extra possession, and that could be the difference.

Dallas is 10th in plays per drive, and 4th in points per drive, so increasing the pace wouldn’t take the Cowboys out of their comfort zone, but it could take the Eagles out of theirs. Though they did come back from a 19 point deficit against the Rams in Week 3, the Eagles aren’t really built or perform like a team that can get hot in a hurry late.

And yes, the Eagles defense has played better over the last two weeks, but it also has spent most of the game on the sidelines, the Packers and Lions averaged 26:03 in time of possession. They have also had some luck. Detroit had 13 possessions, three of their five failed fourth down attempts were in Eagles territory.

The Eagles have been great at not giving the opposition the ball via turnover, but they’ve been as bad...