The Cowboys blew a 14-point lead to let Aaron Rodgers and the Packers mount a comeback and eventually win their Week 10 game in overtime. It was a gut-wrenching way to end what was supposed to have been a storybook return to Green Bay for Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy and an exorcising of the demons that Rodgers and Lambeau Field represent for America’s Team.
But there’s something else that makes the 31-28 loss even harder to stomach for Cowboys Nation. It’s the fact that the officials, once again, are part of the story, with Cowboys players and even McCarthy himself listing them among the reasons why Dallas came up short on Sunday.
The Cowboys racked up nine accepted penalties, giving away 83 yards on the day. Only in Weeks 1 and 6 has the team drawn more more flags this year; those games represent their other two losses. Dallas, last season’s penalty leader, is in the top five for infractions once again in 2022 and even outranks eight teams who have played an entire extra contest.
McCarthy mentioned penalties at several points in his postgame press conference, even throwing back his head and raising his voice to a shout at one point in addressing the issue.
“Very, very, VERY frustrating,” McCarthy bellowed. “But you’ve got to overcome those things.”
The team, however, did not overcome. And afterward, many were quick to point to a handful of calls, especially in the overtime period, as critical turning points.
The first came on a 2nd-and-3, when rookie wide receiver Jalen Tolbert drew an offensive offside flag, a penalty that’s been called just two other times in 2022 and only once in all of 2021.
It’s rare because it’s inexcusable. An offensive player making sure he’s lined up behind the ball is as rudimentary as football gets, but a wideout even has a built-in safety net. Receivers at every level of the sport are taught to turn their head toward the sideline to literally get a thumbs-up approval from an official- either the line judge or the down judge, depending on which end of the line of scrimmage is closest- before the play begins.
Although the electronically-generated line that TV viewers see is unofficial, Tolbert was clearly lined up well across it. He did check with down judge Sarah Thomas and took a half-step back just before the snap. But it wasn’t nearly enough, earning a five-yard foul and setting the tone for the rest of the possession.
Cowboys WR Jalen Tolbert was called for offside. The problem was not that he failed to check with the down judge. It was that he waited. Tolbert didn't look over until 11 seconds left on play clock. Snap came at nine. He moved too little, too late. Learning experience for rookie. pic.twitter.com/xlt23GbBhh
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) November 14, 2022
Tolbert told a different story, though, to his teammates and coach.
“On that one- the offside, I guess you could say- Jalen said the ref told him to get up and scoot up on the line,” quarterback Dak Prescott said from the podium. “So I don’t know; I guess you’re splitting hairs with whether the ref tells him to scoot up or not. I don’t know about that one.”
McCarthy was similarly perplexed by the moment.
“I got no explanation,” he said postgame. “You watch the game, the receivers check with the side all day long. I can only go on what J.T. told me coming off; he said he got permission and it was called for being in the neutral zone. I don’t understand the timing of that, to be honest with you. To sit there and have communication the whole game- I mean, you sit there and watch the receivers- everybody does it in pro football. You check every time. It’s almost part of your stance. Just disappointing. I’m sure we’ll look at the tape and obviously, he must have been in the neutral zone if she called it. But to have those penalties at that time, we obviously just couldn’t overcome it.”
The Cowboys did, though, make the lost yardage back on the next play to extend the drive. But three plays later, a holding call against left guard Connor McGovern brought back a 16-yard gain from Malik Davis that would have put Dallas on the Green Bay 26.
Three plays later, LG Connor McGovern disagreed with fateful holding call. "Once I felt the back go past me, I let go. I didn't grab anything. The ref said I tried to restrict him, tried to tackle him. Watching it on the replay, watching it on the iPad, I still don't see it." pic.twitter.com/8hcPAOgBwt
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) November 14, 2022
McGovern felt the play was clean. Prescott wasn’t necessarily surprised it was deemed otherwise, given the team’s ongoing penalty problem.
But he also wasn’t ready to blame that play for the loss.
“From my view, I thought it was clean,” Prescott explained, “but obviously, I’m not a ref; I’m just handing the ball off. But at the end of the day, to me, some of that’s just excuses. We’ve got to play beyond that. We’ve been getting penalties… it’s still on us.”
Prescott took it upon himself to get that yardage back, too, finding Dalton Schultz for a 16-yard pickup on the next play to bring up 3rd-and-3.
What happened next was actually a non-call that left the Cowboys more bewildered than any of the actual penalties that had been levied against them. Despite being draped all over Cowboys wideout CeeDee Lamb coming out of his route, Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander did not draw a flag on what certainly looked to be a clear example of defensive pass interference.
“Yes,” the receiver confirmed to media members when asked if it was DPI. “No question.”
This was not called pass interference against Green Bay… pic.twitter.com/j40aMlOj8X
— Joey Hayden (@_joeyhayden) November 14, 2022
A frustrated Lamb went on to say that he got no further feedback from officials on why the contact was allowed to stand.
“They don’t ever give us any explanation. They just call flags on us and not on the opposing team.”
That’s become an all-too familiar refrain for several Cowboys players, who were unusually vocal in 2021 after flag-filled losses to the Raiders and Cardinals and the botched ending to the playoff loss versus San Francisco. The claim is that NFL officials- either consciously or not- have some sort of bias against the Cowboys.
Running back Tony Pollard takes it as fact.
“Playing for the Cowboys, those type of calls we normally don’t get on our side,” Pollard offered. “It’s expected. We just have to be better.”
That last part is what right guard Zack Martin concentrated on, though, refusing to take the bait on making any kind of statement about referee Brad Allen’s crew.
“I’m not going to comment on any of the officials stuff,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to make a play at the end to seal the game out.”
They did not.
The Alexander non-call left Dallas with a 4th-and-3 from the Packers’ 35. Rather than attempt a 53-yard field goal into the wind, McCarthy opted to go for it. But he admitted that the number of penalties in the game’s key moments did factor into his decision.
“To be honest with you, I felt we needed to go for it. I called it on second down,” the coach shared, “especially the way the game was going: it was big play, penalty. Big play, penalty. Big play, penalty. Our thing was to keep playing.”
They didn’t get to keep playing for long. Prescott’s 4th-down pass fell incomplete. It took Rodgers just five plays to guide the Packers to the Cowboys’ 10-yard-line… helped, not surprisingly, by one last Dallas penalty.
The truth is, Cowboys were beaten even before Mason Crosby’s kick sailed through the uprights.
But just as they did in tough moments last season, a healthy number of the Cowboys players are pinning a good portion of the blame on the team wearing black and white stripes.
“Every one of us was fighting hard today,” said Lamb, “but I feel like your confidence kind of gets negated every time the refs get involved, and then putting ourselves in bad situations and trying to dig ourselves out of it.”
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