The Dallas Cowboys travelled to the land of 10,000 lakes to face the Minnesota Vikings on Halloween. With the contest competing head to head with Game 5 of the World Series, the NFL matchup drew a larger audience with 12.82 million viewers. Prior to the start of the game, the then 5-1 Cowboys reported quarterback Dak Prescott would be inactive leading the way for backup QB Cooper Rush to get his first NFL start.
Rush was ready for his big moment and overcame an up and down first half to throw for over 300 yards and lead a scoring drive with less than a minute left in the game to hand the then 3-3 Vikings their fourth loss of the season.
In a game with a backup quarterback making his first NFL start, the Cowboys lost the turnover battle for the first time this season, were called for over 10 penalties and trailed the majority of the game. As the saying goes, “good football teams find ways to win” and the Cowboys did just that.
Here are the five biggest plays of the game using Expected Points Added (EPA) and Win Probability models from rbsdm.com. EPA is a formula that takes historical data and applies it to every play to determine if it increases or decreases a team’s expected points given the outcome of that play. Every down and distance has a level of expected points; the likelihood a team will score on that particular drive based on that situation. Therefore EPA measures the shift in expected points as a result of a specific play.