Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys ended their losing streak to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night? Without a win? For the first time in this rivalry’s history, the two teams tied, and nobody has any idea how to feel about it. Week’s worth of drama leading into this game because of Micah Parsons switching sides from America’s Team to the Packers, a primetime matchup of two sides coming off of bad early season losses, a second straight overtime home game for Dallas, and a tie. Sunday night will go down as one of the wackiest Cowboys games in a long, long time.
The game started in a way many of the home fans feared, with Green Bay rolling offensively and putting Dallas in an early hole to force them into Dak Prescott hero ball. Luckily for Brian Schottenheimer’s team, Prescott was ready to put on his superman cape and answer this call, but so too was Jordan Love for the Packers. In the spirit of having a new result in a series between two historic teams that first met all the way back in 1960, this game easily could have had three different headlines before arriving at a mostly unsatisfying conclusion.
Early on the Cowboys seemed destined to fall to 1-3 and compound their road loss to the Bears with another week of negativity towards playoff hopes, the entire operation on defense, and Prescott’s ability to win games. Once the Cowboys got on the board in the strangest of ways, a blocked extra point returned for two points, they rallied to take the lead before halftime. The Cowboys didn’t score on the first possession of the second half to build on this lead, but as the game went back and forth from here they did reclaim the lead four more times. At any of these points, the headline of this game was tantalizingly close to the Cowboys having a signature win for Schottenheimer. The Cowboys defense was unable to get a single stop in the second half or overtime though, and hung on for dear life to get a tie.
Sunday night was also the first time the Cowboys have scored 40 points in a game and not won outright since 2013 versus the Broncos. This was another classic from Arlington, as Peyton Manning and Tony Romo dueled to a 51-48 Denver win.
To this day, that Broncos-Cowboys game is remembered as one of the most obvious examples of how bad Cowboys defenses let Romo down throughout his career. To a much lesser extent, the Cowboys defense let Prescott down against the Packers here in week four, but at least did just enough to not lose yet another backbreaker to an opponent that’s had their number. Whether or not this Packers game feels more like a win or a loss is still up in the air though.
Before moving on to the first of two visits to MetLife Stadium this season for the Cowboys looming in week five, let’s try to...
