According to reports, there was a football game played in AT&T Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Somebody should have let the Cowboys know about that so they could show up.
In all seriousness, this game went about as terribly as one could’ve predicted for the Cowboys. There was plenty of hype around this matchup, the third straight year that the Lions had traveled to Dallas with the Cowboys looking for their third straight win. Last year’s matchup, of course, was a nail-biter than ended in controversy. This game promised to be filled with fireworks.
It was, indeed, filled with fireworks. However, only on the part of the Lions, who dominated this game almost from the start. Dallas won the toss and opted to take the ball to start the game, as they have in recent weeks. The offense got off to a hot start but, as has also been the case much of this year, the drive fizzled out and Brandon Aubrey came in to drill a field goal.
The Lions took the field and immediately paid homage to last year’s game, with extra offensive lineman Dan Skipper reporting as eligible before David Montgomery ran for five yards on first down. Then, Detroit set about exacting revenge for last year’s loss. Jared Goff hit Tim Patrick on a 45-yard deep shot, and a couple of plays later Montgomery pinballed off defenders for a touchdown.
The Cowboys sought to respond and, once again, their offense began to move the ball well. They reached the red zone with relative ease, but then things fell apart. For the second week in a row, Dak Prescott threw a pick while targeting CeeDee Lamb in the endzone.
That was the moment where things came off the rails for the Cowboys. Detroit only got a field goal after the turnover, upping their lead to 10-3, but the Cowboys punted on their next two drives, with a Lions touchdown sandwiched in between.
Another field goal gave the Lions a 20-3 lead, which set up a sequence for the Cowboys that felt like the end of the game. After an incompletion to Lamb and a short pass to Jalen Tolbert, Dallas was forced to go for it on fourth and two in the second quarter. The playcall was a slow developing pass to KaVontae Turpin, whose small frame was overcome by the defender that broke up the pass.
Six plays later, the Lions rumbled into the endzone again. A 79-yard kickoff return from Turpin set the team up for a field goal to cut the score down to 27-6 at halftime, but this game was over. Anyone watching the game could tell from the body language of the players that the Cowboys checked out early, while the Lions – who continued to call trick plays through the fourth quarter – were hellbent on making their opponent hurt.
Defensively, the Cowboys couldn’t get a stop to save their lives. That’s not exactly a shock, considering how many starters they’re missing right now and how talented this Lions offense is. It was still disheartening to see so many open receivers and such little resistance against the run.
The offense was a much bigger issue. Dallas came into this game second in pressure rate allowed (meaning only one team was giving up fewer pressures) and Detroit’s defense was 28th in pressure rate. Despite that, Prescott was under duress on nearly every play, and rarely had a clean pocket to throw from. On the rare occasions that he did, Prescott seemingly had no one to throw to. Even after Lions superstar Aidan Hutchinson went down with a gruesome leg injury, the Lions continued to eat up this offensive line.
This game had all the hallmarks of a nightmare scenario for the Cowboys, right down to the reignition of the debate over the windows in an east/west stadium with no curtains. Jalen Tolbert dropped a deep shot late in the game from Prescott, and it sure looked as if he was blinded by the sun when he looked back to catch it. Later, Prescott’s second interception of the day came on a play where he was staring straight into the sun while a Detroit defender was bearing down on him.
Things got so bad that Prescott, and a few other starters, were pulled at the start of the fourth quarter. It didn’t make a difference, as Cooper Rush threw a red zone pick of his own and Turpin later fumbled the ball, taking the Cowboys up to five turnovers on the day against zero from the Lions.
Not a single thing went right in this one for the Cowboys, who still have yet to win a game in their home stadium in the calendar year after previously being undefeated here. The issues go deeper than an absent homefield advantage, though, as the Lions utterly outclassed this team in every single facet of the game. Three years ago that would have been unthinkable, but now the Cowboys are forced to grapple with their standing in the NFC.
And if that’s not bad enough, they now head into their bye week with all this negative energy lingering, right before traveling west to take on the 49ers. Oh yeah, it could be a really long October in Dallas.
