By: Anthony Miller
Despite picking up 56 yards of penalties on the final drive, it wasn’t enough for the Dallas Cowboys as they fell to the Philadelphia Eagles on the road 28-23 Sunday afternoon.
It was a seesaw back-and-forth game between the two teams as when one team scored, the other would respond. That happened a lot in the first half as the Eagles struck first with a Jalen Hurts touchdown pass to A.J. Brown to make it 7-0. After a KaVontae Turpin return to the Dallas 47-yard line, the Cowboys responded with a Dak Prescott touchdown pass to Jake Ferguson to tie the game at 7-7.
Dallas forced a three-and-out which resulted in another scoring drive ending with Turpin catching a five-yard touchdown from Prescott to give them a 14-7 lead. Philly responded on right back driving down the field ending in a Hurts tush push touchdown to tie the game at 14-14. Brandon Aubrey came through for the Cowboys near the end of the half with a 51-yard field goal to give Dallas a 17-14 lead at halftime.
The second half did not begin how Dallas would want to as the Eagles scored touchdowns on their first two offensive drives of the game. After being down 28-17, the Cowboys drove down to inside the five-yard line, but Luke Schoonmaker’s fourth down one-yard touchdown was reversed as he was short of the goal line giving Philadelphia the ball at their own one-yard line.
Things got better for the Cowboys as they were able to force a three-and-out and drive 52 yards to have Prescott connect with Jalen Tolbert for a seven-yard touchdown. Prescott scrambled for the two-point conversion that had him step out of bounds before the ball crossed the end zone which would leave Dallas trailing 28-23.
Dallas’ defense made yet another three-and-out as the Cowboys’ offense was able to get to the Eagles’ 29-yard line before stalling on fourth down thanks to two Prescott sacks late in the drive. A third straight three-and-out by the Cowboys’ defense gave the ball back with 46 seconds left, no timeouts by either team and 86 yards to go down the field for a score.
56 penalty yards given by the Eagles and a CeeDee Lamb 14-yard completion later put Dallas on the Eagles’ six-yard line. Tyler Smith committed a false start penalty that started a bad sequence of plays for Dallas. Prescott was sacked on the next play back to the Eagles’ 22-yard line and without spiking the ball to stop the clock, he threw an incomplete pass. After a delay of game penalty, the game ends with Prescott connecting with Lamb being tackled four yards short of the end zone and fumbling the ball to seal their 28-23 loss.
Observations From the Dallas Cowboys Loss
Starting with the one topic Dallas fans have been talking about, time management at the end of the game. It has continued to haunt this team during the Mike McCarthy era. After Prescott’s sack on the last drive, Dallas could have spiked the ball to give them at least two more plays to the end zone. Instead, they ran another play giving themselves just five seconds to score. This will be talked about as a big miss from McCarthy and one that might have cost them the game.
Prescott’s performance shouldn’t be forgotten in this game. He finished with 374 yards passing and three touchdowns. Throughout the game, he was able to effectively avoid the pass rush of the Eagles and make plays with his feet. The missed two-point conversion and late sack will be all people talk about, but the reality is Prescott kept Dallas in the game and deserves a lot of credit.
One aspect of the offense Dallas wished they could have been better at was running the football. In the second half, Tony Pollard had a couple of nice runs that showed that the Cowboys could have stuck with running the ball, but being behind by two possessions ruined those hopes. Dallas finished with just 73 rushing yards on 21 attempts in the game.
While it was a rough start to the second half for the Dallas defense allowing two touchdowns on the first two drives of the half, they finished with three straight three-and-outs to close the game. Philly had 161 yards of offense in the second half with 14 of those yards being in the fourth quarter. While it wasn’t an ideal start to the second half, the Cowboys defense held the Eagles to 292 total yards of offense which is impressive.
The Cowboys are currently sitting at 5-3 on the season and are now 2.5 games behind the Eagles in the NFC East. They will have a chance to rebound this Sunday against the beaten-up 2-7 New York Giants at 3:25 pm CST on FOX.
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