Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys were handled with relative ease by the Detroit Lions on Thursday night. It was frustrating.
Prior to the game fans had begun to believe and give this team their heart once more. They deserved this as they had won three games in a row, the second and third of which were particularly impressive, and sometimes you just lose a game. That is life in professional sports.
It’s not an excuse for what Dallas did on Thursday night, though. They made a ton of mistakes and dug themselves way too deep of a hole to climb out of (kind of a microcosm for their season). You can’t do that in general in the NFL, but you certainly can’t play with that kind of fire against a proper team like the Lions.
It was a sobering night and one that the Cowboys will have to think about for a while as they have the mini-bye to rest and recuperate. Here is our Stock Report from the game.
There is no denying that Thursday night was George Pickens’ worst in a Cowboys uniform. He appeared to be less engaged than normal and was clearly frustrated with how the game was unfolding.
We can make note of this while not overreacting and saying that the Cowboys should not extend him now. Pickens has been a revelation for the Cowboys, so much so that he has exponentially increased the expectation that people have of him. It is inexcusable that he could not get things together on Thursday night, and the offense as a whole suffered as a result of it.
The offensive pass interference penalty at the very end of the game was absurd, but by that point in time Jake Ferguson had already had a bad night.
Ferguson has had a solid season in his own right, but he has also had games where he has had oopsie moments that really cost the team. In this particular game he hurt the Cowboys from a penalty standpoint (aside from the bad call at the end) and as a result of his fumble.
The Cowboys special teams group (outside of Brandon Aubrey) is having a bit of a rough go (more on that in a bit) and KaVontae Turpin is far from the prolific returner he used to be which is making matters even worse.
During this game Turpin was penalized for an improper fair catch signal. This kind of thing is unacceptable in general, but the problem is he was just very recently penalized for the same exact thing.
There is a real lack of discipline here right now.
What else can we say here? This is without question the worst move that the Cowboys made in the offseason. They admittedly did not give up a ton to acquire Kenneth Murray by way of trade, but they have spent a lot...
