The Cowboys parlayed another mediocre performance into another game in the win column. Here’s what Dallas accomplished in the 27-13 road win at Tennessee:
Underwhelmed without underachieving ✔
Freed from the burden of expectations, the Tennessee Titans played appropriately cynical football on Thursday. No matter what happened against the Cowboys, their season will be determined next weekend, in a winner-take-all clash with Jacksonville that will send one team to the playoffs as AFC South champions and the other home for the winter. That left them with a choice: risk injuring their best players for nothing or rest many of them and gear up for the game that really matters.
Tennessee did what it was incentivized to do. The Titans took the field missing more than half a dozen starters. They heavily featured backups on both lines. Their quarterback, Joshua Dobbs, has spent time on three NFL rosters this year, hadn’t started an NFL game, and last threw a touchdown during his senior year with the Tennessee Volunteers back in 2016. They were utterly indifferent to winning this game.
Naturally, then, the Cowboys labored more than they should have to defeat them. Ever since the blowout at Minnesota, they’ve been convincingly unconvincing. Setting aside a deserved loss to the Jaguars, Dallas has played down to the woeful Texans, the Jalen Hurts-less Eagles, the deeply mediocre (and injury-ravaged) Giants, and, for three quarters, whatever passes for an NFL team in Indianapolis. They won all of those games, of course, and they won this one, too, despite three turnovers and allowing Tennessee’s B-squad to match them in yards per play. (Things are liable to go your way when an opponent piles on a gasp-inducing 10 penalties for 124 yards, including a hysterical 51-yard pass interference penalty to bail Dallas out on 3rd-and-19.)
And that’s the rub: Dallas keeps winning. Rickety as the last month and a half has been, to say nothing of the ramshackle Cooper Rush era earlier in the year, the Cowboys just secured back-to-back 12-win seasons for the first time since 1994 and 1995. They now boast the most wins over teams with winning records this season. Defeat Washington next weekend and they’ll deliver the fourth 13-win season in franchise history (albeit in one extra game, thanks to the advent of the 17-game schedule).
All the groundwork is there for a collapse: the lackadaisical streak, the turnovers, the personnel concerns in the passing offense and defense, the occasionally bewildering coaching move. But thus far, the Cowboys have leaned into their worst tendencies without toppling over. In two weeks, we’ll get our first glimpse at whether they can sustain it when the games matter most.
Kept streaking ✔
Ezekiel Elliott’s game-opening touchdown marked his ninth game in a row with a score. That’s the NFL’s longest active streak and, per Cowboys PR, the only such streak by a Dallas player since Emmitt Smith ripped off scores in 11 straight back in 1995. If Elliott extends that mark one more game, it will match the third-most touchdowns the 27-year-old had previously scored in an entire season.
Not all great running backs score touchdowns, however, and not all running backs who score touchdowns are great. In Elliott’s case, he’s still mostly the player he has been: his 4.1 yards per carry average going in was smack in between his average from the previous two seasons, while his meager 1.6 rushing yards after contact per attempt are a hallmark of a big back who can’t push piles the way he used to. He ended the day with 37 yards on 19 rushing attempts. His longest was 6 yards.
There’s value in a runner who can grind out yards at the goal line, especially when Elliott’s bruising style complements Tony Pollard’s burst. There’s just not nearly as much value as Elliot’s gaudy touchdown total might tempt you to believe.
Hit the century mark ✔
Here, on the other hand, is a number indicative of something important:
Consider this your short-form argument the next time someone wonders just how great Lamb has become in his third NFL season. That number is your flashing neon sign to point to, your statistical mic drop. Yes, that number coincides with a growth in opportunity—Lamb averaged the 14th most targets per game in the NFL this season heading into this week—but it’s come at the expense of a supporting cast after the subtraction of Amari Cooper and the fall off from Dalton Schultz and Michael Gallup. Perhaps that’s arrived in the form of T.Y. Hilton, who flashed sorely needed dynamism and unpredictability in his second game as a Cowboy. It is telling, of course, that the Cowboys are still searching for a second dependable threat two weeks before the playoffs begin. It is even more so that their greatest facsimile of one is a 33-year-old just signed off the street after looking finished in Indianapolis.
But the greatest takeaway is that Lamb has transcended those shortcomings. He kept the offense afloat under Rush, and he has made it soar since Prescott’s return. Like his new contemporaries in the century-catch club, he’s done it with brains more than burst, through well-run routes and physicality after the catch. He keeps getting open, and he keeps earning more yards than he ought to. No Cowboy has been more vital to this team’s success.
Brought the hustle ✔
Take a stab at which of these guys is Micah Parsons:
Only fair his feet worked overtime considering…
Got a ray of hope in the secondary ✔
On Wednesday, StrongSide’s Jake Kemp wrote about the very real problem that is the Cowboys secondary, which has plummeted since Anthony Brown and Jourdan Lewis were ruled out for the season. The latter hasn’t stung as much as the former given the rise of rookie DaRon Bland in the slot. But the second outside corner spot has been a turnstile. Dallas offered disappointing 2021 second-rounder Kelvin Joseph every chance to claim the position, only for Joseph to play his way out of a role faster than even his detractors could have expected. (He might be doing the same on special teams after his two penalties there on Thursday brought his season total to a team-high six.)
That forced the Cowboys to turn to 2021 third-rounder Nahshon Wright. Cue Jake:
For Wright, in particular, the time is now. He has an opportunity to prove he can be the starter next year. Brown is heading into free agency, but even if Dallas opts to bring him back, he’ll be a 30-year-old coming off a torn Achilles. Whether Wright fills that outside corner spot long-term is a conversation for another time. In any event, he’s the only guy on the roster capable of forcing his way into that conversation.
That conversation seemed in danger of being halted early on, as Wright took two trips to the injury tent. Each time, he made his way back onto the field. Then, with 6:05 left in the game, he did this:
This was the spark so long awaited from a player Dallas drafted well ahead of consensus. The tools are there—in fact, Wright’s uber-long 6-foot-4 frame is probably why he’s here. But fair or not, the injuries mean Dallas no longer has time to let Wright get by on potential alone. Thursday provided hope that he might realize enough of it in time to fix Dallas’ biggest trouble spot before it’s too late.
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