Blogging The Boys
Going into the Dallas Cowboys game against the Philadelphia Eagles, the last person you would have guessed as being most responsible for a Dallas loss would have been CeeDee Lamb. In fact, with Micah Parsons no longer on the team, you could call Lamb the Cowboys best player. On Thursday night, he showed a lot of why he is so good with a stat line of seven catches for 110 yards.
But it was the other stat that really mattered. Drops.
Lamb had multiple drops in the game, but it was the one late in the game that was most damaging. On a first down with a little over two minutes left in the game, Dallas had the ball and needed a touchdown to take the lead. Dak Prescott launched a long pass to Lamb which hit the star receiver chest-high, right in his hands. Lamb did the unthinkable and dropped it. He also “dropped” the fourth-down pass on the same drive, but that was a much tougher catch. It’s a drop for Lamb, but for most receivers it would have just been a ‘nice try’. That is the burden of stardom.
To Lamb’s credit, he took full responsibility for what happened and vowed to do better this season.
“That’s terrible,” Lamb said. “Honestly, I can’t point the finger at anybody else. I take full accountability and everything else that comes with it. Because as a player, I train for moments like that and the ball to come my way. For me to not come up with it, it stings. But if you think I’m not coming back harder than this, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Lamb said he’ll get right back to work, analyzing what went wrong, even though he already knows how painful it’s going to be to see his drops on tape.
“I’m definitely gonna look at this film and dread every drop, that’s for sure,” Lamb said. “I need to catch the damn ball.”
On the positive side of things, if Lamb is the biggest issue the Cowboys walk out of the game with, then they should be fine going forward. Lamb is not going to do what he did Thursday night on a regular basis. In fact, the experience just might push him to reach a new level in his game if that is even possible.
For one night, Lamb was the goat, not the G.O.A.T. Don’t expect it to happen again.
