Blogging The Boys
Coming into Thursday night’s NFL kickoff between the Cowboys and the reigning Super Bowl champion Eagles, nobody was believing in America’s Team. They were the biggest underdog of any team in Week 1, and hardly anyone was predicting the Cowboys to win.
They didn’t win, of course; Philadelphia held on to win 24-20 in a game that saw a flurry of scoring in the first half followed by just three combined points in the second half. But the manner in which this game unfolded – Dak Prescott returning to form, the Dallas defense shutting the Eagles out of the endzone in the second half – offered real hope for the season after a week that seemingly extinguished all of it.
It was a peculiar game through and through, too.
The opening kickoff featured an Eagles player, fullback Ben VanSumeren, suffering an injury that required him to be carted off. As that happened, Eagles star defensive tackle Jalen Carter got ejected after spitting on Prescott. The Philadelphia defense lost its best player before they’d even played a down.
That prompted a hot start from Prescott and the Cowboys offense in their first real showing with Brian Schottenheimer calling plays. And boy did the offense look good, too. There was pre-snap motion, play-action, jet sweep motion with KaVontae Turpin, and some really, really strong running from Javonte Williams.
Before long, Williams had two rushing touchdowns, and the Cowboys were up 17-14 with just over two minutes left in the half. A touchdown run from Saquon Barkley put the Eagles back up, but Prescott made just enough plays to get in range for another Brandon Aubrey field goal, cutting it to a 21-20 halftime score.
The problem in the first half had been defense, and that went both ways. The Eagles couldn’t stop Prescott, but Matt Eberflus’ unit was also struggling. There was hardly any pass rush, and Jalen Hurts was running all over the place. He and Barkley helped rack up 100+ rushing yards in just the first half.
Something clicked, though. The defense tightened up in the second half, making a big stop on third down to limit Philadelphia to a 58-yard field goal from Jake Elliott on their opening drive of the third quarter. It felt as if things were starting to shift in the Cowboys’ favor.
That feeling was intensified when Miles Sanders, a former Eagle, broke off a 49-yard run to flip the field. Suddenly, the Cowboys were just 11 yards out from taking the lead. Then, more strange things happened. An unnecessary roughness penalty on George Pickens backed them up, an unnecessary roughness penalty on the Eagles moved them forward, and then Sanders lost the ball.
The Eagles recovered that fumble, and a gutsy diving tackle from Prescott prevented a touchdown return, but the drive had been killed. And just to make things even more peculiar, lightning started to strike nearby, and the game went into a rain delay that lasted just over an hour.
When the...
