The Cowboys will celebrate Christmas in style thanks a 40-34 win over the NFC-best Philadelphia Eagles. Here’s what got accomplished in Dallas’ 11th win of the season:
Left something nice under the tree ✔
On another day, in a different week, you’d have license to gripe about how the Cowboys won this game. Dallas had to work hard to defeat Gardner Minshew, the backup quarterback standing in for MVP candidate Jalen Hurts, and needed four turnovers to do it. The secondary once again got lit up, and Dak Prescott and Mike McCarthy did their damnedest to breathe life into Philadelphia’s final drive with a trio of ill-advised decisions. This game left a trail of red flags to revisit if—when?—Dallas crashes out early yet again in the playoffs.
But I’m here to advise against dwelling on these red flags on Christmas Eve, six days after this football team indefensibly dropped a game in Jacksonville. Because the Cowboys spent three hours trading elbows with their nemesis and didn’t buckle when the pressure was on. Dak Prescott played outstanding football—minus one throw, which we’ll get to—as Dallas’ offense continues to snatch the baton from its flagging defense as the team’s catalyst:
DaRon Bland just might be a star, CeeDee Lamb absolutely is one, and one play is all it took for T.Y. Hilton to go down in Cowboys lore (we’ll get to that, too). The defense buckled without breaking, and it found ways to win without sacking the quarterback once. Brett Maher, a glaring Pro Bowl snub, kept making kicks when called upon.
Enjoy those things, and set the rest aside for a few days.
The Dallas Cowboys beat the Philadelphia Eagles. And on this day, of all days, that is enough.
Continued Dak’s interception blues ✔
Dan Morse wrote about Dak Prescott’s recent penchant to throw interceptions after the Jacksonville debacle, because how couldn’t he? The TL;DR—although, really, you should read it—is things haven’t been quite as ugly as you’d think, in no small part due to those picks not costing Dallas much on the scoreboard.
Well, this one certainly did:
This was Prescott’s second pick-six in his last four throws dating back to last week, which is the kind of stat that says little (the Jacksonville game-sealer was on Noah Brown, not Prescott) and plenty (right now, Dak is liable to turn it over at any moment of the game). The takeaway is they’re pendulum swingers no matter when they go down.
File this away; don’t harp on it right now. Other players had bigger moments, but no one did more to win Dallas this game than Prescott. Yet we aren’t far removed from seeing how one of these mistakes can lose a game, too.
Participated in the most football play that has ever footballed ✔
Before delving into what, exactly, I’m referring to, I need you to fire this up to get into the appropriate headspace:
Got it rolling? Great. Now watch this:
This is the sort of football your great uncle reminisces about at Christmas dinner. It’s what the worst high school football coaches in America, the ones who insist CTE is a myth and scream at their players to rub some dirt on ligament tears, fetishize.
Fourth down on the goal line.
Grown men colliding like rams.
Frigid temperatures. (If they’d ever open the roof at the Death Star.)
Yeah, buddy! Run that NFL Films music back!
Showcased that most unfortunate bit of AT&T Stadium architecture ✔
Shot:
Chaser:
But, hey, it’s not like the coaching staff had every reason to be aware of this longstanding issue on their home field when they asked Michael Gallup to highpoint a crucial third-down pass with the sun in his eyes. Or that this longstanding issue could be resolved with a teensy bit of stadium renovation—or, you know, curtains.
At least Jerry isn’t worried.
Kearsed the Eagles ✔
We probably do not speak often enough about how Dallas, after a decade of futility at safety, now has three quality players to depend on at the position. That’s not to say it goes unacknowledged, and it certainly gets attention on this website; Jake Kemp wrote about Donovan Wilson in October while I focused on Malik Hooker after the Indianapolis game earlier this month. It’s just a marvel that a longstanding liability has grown into such a strength that we can go most of the season without spotlighting this group’s lynchpin.
Because Jayron Kearse is every bit of that. Emotionally, he is a culture setter: the voice who publicly took this defense to task for being more bark than bite in recent weeks. Physically, he’s a rare bird, a 6-foot-4 jumbo DB more than big enough to bring the thump in the run game yet agile enough not to be phased out of today’s pass-saturated NFL. And that length is how he made the first of two turnover recoveries leading to Dallas scores:
Kearse followed that up with a fumble recovery, the third consecutive takeaway that he played a role in over Dallas’ last two games. (Bland ended that streak with his fourth-quarter interception of Minshew.)
As FOX Sports’ David Helman, one of the sharpest minds in the Cowboysphere, put it, few players have elevated themselves from the roster fringes to an essential cog quite like Kearse. His presence doesn’t reduce the need to pay Wilson this offseason. Nor does it make Hooker, the rangiest of the group, any less important. But Kearse has done a little bit of everything for this group over the past two seasons. And Saturday he was a lot of what did Philadelphia in.
Were on the wrong end of a pretty weird touchdown celebration ✔
I’m not sure what to make of this DeVonta Smith celebration other than it was very elaborate and very intense:
What does that look like to you? Because I’m going with this guy’s take:
Which, as StrongSide alumnus Roberto José Andrade Franco points out, really makes you wonder about a bigger question:
So the point is DeVonta Smith maybe, possibly (probably?) hates charity. Unless he’s robbing the Salvation Army to distribute the funds himself, in a pretty violent take on Robin Hood. But why? Is he aware of the Salvation Army’s concerning track record on LGBTQ+ issues and wants to knock them down a peg a la Macy’s? Does he have his own network of charities he’s distributing these imaginary funds to instead?
Many questions. Few answers. Much like the Cowboys’ day trying to stop Smith.
Got it right (for once) at wide receiver ✔
The 2022-23 Dallas Cowboys are where they are in the standings because the front office nailed most of its eyebrow-raising decisions from what was widely regarded as an underwhelming offseason.
The front office was right about Tyler Smith, just like it was right about almost every move it made in the 2022 NFL Draft. Even though it tried and failed to re-sign Randy Gregory, it was right that the team would be fine without him—so right, in fact, that all three of his would-be replacements (Dorance Armstrong, Dante Fowler, and Sam Williams) have made plays this season. Management was right about Tyron Smith returning from injury earlier than a skeptical public imagined. And it was right that Cooper Rush could keep the season afloat. Oh, and the bosses were right about the Maher reunion tour, too, which might be the most delightful subplot of the whole season.
Yet along the way, they miscalculated the wide receiver position at every turn.
They traded Amari Cooper for a pittance, only to see him turn in one of his most productive seasons in years while catching most of his passes from a backup quarterback. They paid Michael Gallup second-receiver money for what has been fourth-receiver production. They signed James Washington, a real-life cowboy who has been too injured to do anything of consequence for the football Cowboys. They drafted Jalen Tolbert, the one great disappointment in this rookie class, whose only notable moment to date was somehow lining up offside at a crucial moment in the overtime loss to the Packers. They chased Odell Beckham Jr., only to learn that Beckham isn’t healthy enough to play football yet.
But for a moment, all of those failures felt incidental. That’s what can happen when Hilton, management’s latest gambit, came up good when Dallas needed him most:
Considering the circumstances, this play is in the conversation for the best of Dallas’ season. Same goes for Dak Prescott’s career. This was the margin separating Dallas from another disappointing loss, and it was delivered by a 33-year-old speed merchant who looked well past his best over the past year-plus.
Not that Hilton didn’t try to warn people that he still had juice in his legs…
No, really, he did!
Called shots don’t get much better than that.
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