‘Can we do it?’ How Cowboys set the table for turkey leg TD celebration vs Commanders

From @ToddBrock24f7: Dak Prescott & the Cowboys cooked up a memorable TD celly on Thanksgiving, but getting edible turkey in the end zone required some legwork.

Of course it was Jake Ferguson who cooked up the idea.

The Cowboys tight end was the mastermind behind last year’s Whac-A-Mole touchdown celebration, when Ferguson, Dalton Schultz, and Sean McKeon all jumped into a Salvation Army red kettle while Peyton Hendershot used the football he had just scored with as the mallet in a memorable tight-ends-only moment during Dallas’s Week 12 win over the New York Giants.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the second-year man took it upon himself to come up with a way to top it this Thanksgiving. But after Ferguson was inspired to plant actual, edible turkey legs in the iconic oversized kettle at AT&T Stadium to chomp on during the game, that idea had to go up the Cowboys food chain.

“We talked about it as probably a two-to-three-day-long process of whether it be a 15-yard penalty and whether Coach [Mike McCarthy] would accept it,” quarterback Dak Prescott said. “I actually go talk to Coach before every game and sure enough, I caught him as he was talking to Jerry [Jones, owner and general manager], and so I mentioned it. Of course, Jerry liked it.”

The Cowboys’ use of the stadium’s red kettles has become part of the holiday tradition, dating back to 2016, when running back Ezekiel Elliott leaped in one after a touchdown run. Several iterations have evolved out of that over the years. Some celebrations have resulted in on-the-field penalties; many have drawn monetary fines from the league. All have brought extra attention to The Salvation Army, the team’s longtime primary charity partner.

But there was concern about this year’s proposed celebration being seen as disrespectful to the visiting Commanders.

“At that point,” Prescott explained, “my direction was just, ‘Make sure we’re up and the game was in hand.”

With that directive, Prescott had to do some legwork to make sure the table was set.

Legends Hospitality, the company that handles concessions at AT&T Stadium, rounded up batches of fully-cooked turkey legs and wrapped them in foil. Stadium workers placed them in the end zones’ four kettles so that the touchdown feast could happen at either end of the field, at whichever kettle Prescott & Co. picked when the moment presented itself.

But that part was up to Prescott.

After he and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb connected on a 15-yard touchdown pass and the two-point conversion that immediately followed, the quarterback considered giving the green light.

“The first touchdown to CeeDee and the following two-point conversion, if you watch, I’m kind of like, ‘Is it time? Can we do it?’ I’m like, ‘No, we’ll get another one.'”

Already up 31-10 at that point with over 10 minutes to play, Prescott was confident that the offense was humming sufficiently to find their way back to the end zone.

Washington’s next possession lasted just six plays, the Commanders turning the ball over on downs at the Cowboys’ 35 in their last-gasp effort to stay in the game.

When Prescott put a rainbow into KaVontae Turpin’s breadbasket in the west end zone just a few minutes later, he decided to ring the dinner bell.

“Yeah, let’s go for it.”

Prescott raced to the kettle. The nimble Turpin jumped in and helped distribute the main course to Cowboys that included Tony Pollard and Ferguson. Bites off the legs were passed around on the Dallas sideline long after the extra point sailed through the uprights and even after DaRon Bland’s record-setting pick-six a few plays later to make the final score 45-10.

There was indeed plenty to go around this Thanksgiving.

“It goes to the prep that we put into this thing,” Prescott said later. “We feel good about what we’ve got. We feel good about the players that we have, and it goes to the preparation we put into this thing. We’ve had the preparation; credit the game plan from these coaches week in and week out. They’re dialing things up and putting playmakers in the best position. Yeah, it’s confidence, simple as that.”

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It was that confidence that let Prescott bypass the earlier opportunity to start the party, assured that the team would have another scoring chance.

“You have a plan to be there,” he told reporters. “I think that says a lot about your plan. You plan to be there. That says a lot, too, though. It’s a mindset, I think it’s important for us to have those expectations of getting in the end zone and understand we’ll get back in there.”

Now Prescott and the Cowboys are feeling confident that they’ll get back to the latter rounds of the playoffs.

And if they do, it may just be the turkey legs that helped fuel the run to get there.

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