Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys lost their season opener on Thursday night to the Philadelphia Eagles. It was a chaotic game in many ways as it began with a player ejection for spitting and featured a lightning delay. That makes two in a 365-day period for the Cowboys.
It was a tough loss that Dallas will have to sit on for a while what with the game taking place on a Thursday. There were some pretty noteworthy performances and others we would like to see improved upon when this team hosts the New York Giants next week.
Let’s get into those.
Here is our first Stock Report of the regular season.
When the Cowboys chose not to have any of their running backs participate in the preseason we all rolled our eyes. Maybe you didn’t, but I will certainly raise my hand. While Javonte Williams hardly set the world on fire he did have the team’s only touchdowns on the night. Yes, plural.
More important than anything Williams looked the part of an RB1 and justified the faith that the coaching staff was seemingly placing in him. We certainly still have some issues with it overall, but he significantly raised our expectations of the room, and that is important.
The Cowboys made mention many times in the aftermath of the Micah Parsons trade as to how important receiving Kenny Clark in return was. Kudos to them, they called their shot.
Even though Jalen Hurts had just about everything he wanted from a running perspective, it was Clark who helped mitigate the damage. He very clearly is going to help this team bolster the run defense, which the front office swore was part of their reasoning behind the trade so in that sense have been partly justified, and that he played so well only a week after being dealt is very impressive.
Sorry to continually bring up the Parsons trade, but it obviously impacts the context of everything, at least in the first game that Dallas played after moving him. In that sense there were always going to be eyes on the new starting pass rushers, recall this was also the first game without DeMarcus Lawrence, and second-year man Marshawn Kneeland stepped right up.
Despite some questionable holding penalties that were not called which would have benefitted him even more, Kneeland proved that he has a lot for the Cowboys to work with. His impact was notable as he kept forcing Hurts to move around, which he unfortunately did very well.
The same logic here is applicable to Sam Williams and the Cowboys have gone as far in the wake of the trade to suggest that he could be in line for an extension soon. If he plays like he did on Thursday then that may very well happen.
Obviously the team’s pass rushers struggled throughout the first half and ultimately could...
