The Cowboys had not returned a kickoff for a touchdown since 2008. It’s odd, then, to think that rookie CeeDee Lamb would get barked at by his coaching staff and teammates for finally taking one to the house in the waning moments of Sunday’s meeting with the visiting 49ers.
But that’s exactly what happened. After one of the most electrifying plays of Dallas’s disappointing 2020 season, the promising young rookie found himself apologizing.
“Honestly, it all happened so fast. It was just a split-second decision,” Lamb told reporters in a postgame interview.
San Francisco had just scored a field goal to draw within seven points of the Cowboys. With 40 seconds on the clock, the 49ers’ best chance of a miracle finish would be to recover an onside kick. It was strangely familiar to the situation that Dallas found themselves in back in Week 2 against Atlanta.
That last-gasp play ended in a highlight-reel moment for the Cowboys. This one did, too.
CeeDee and the D is for dagger.
Took the onside kick all the way back to the house 🏡
(via @NFL)pic.twitter.com/ZKbLvseR17
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 20, 2020
The danger, of course, is that Lamb’s decision to return the awkwardly-bouncing ball exposed him and the team to several risks. Lamb could have fumbled, giving San Francisco the ball with time for another offensive series. Worse yet, a 49ers special teamer could have scooped up Lamb’s muff and taken it the other way for a game-tying touchdown.
These were the scenarios that the rookie’s teammates reminded him of after his return ended- luckily for him- in the end zone.
“You know, I heard it from the defensive guys after, knowing I should have taken a knee. But it was too open, know what I’m saying?”
He laughed when he said it. But it was funny only because nothing bad happened. And only because the Cowboys won.
Even head coach Mike McCarthy had a chuckle as he recalled the play by the first-round pick from Oklahoma. He was nine yards away when Lamb fielded the kick, and still better positioned to tackle Lamb than any member of the 49ers coverage team.
“I’ll tell you, I was standing right there. It’s almost like you can’t blame him,” McCarthy said in his virtual press conference after the win. “When he caught it on the high bounce, you could see that he was going to go down. But he just saw this huge hole in front of him, so it was more of a natural reaction.”
Expect Lamb to get a quick briefing this week on when it’s best to just fall on the ball.
Doing so would have allowed the Dallas offensive line to do a single Landry Shift and Andy Dalton to perform one quick kneeldown to run out the clock. Instead, the Cowboys had to kick the ball back to San Francisco. Backup passer C.J. Beathard was able to squeeze off three more plays, the last one being a 49-yard Hail Mary that wound up in the end zone in the hands of wideout Kendrick Bourne.
Thankfully, Lamb’s touchdown had made that final San Francisco score irrelevant. But it was a bit more excitement than McCarthy wanted to see after a closely-contested game.
“Those are great corrections to have in your team meetings on Wednesdays, when things like that happen. I clearly saw what he saw. But yeah, you want to put the game away, that’s for sure.”
So in that particular situation, yes, McCarthy would have preferred that his talented rookie let the Cowboys’ streak of games without a kick return for a touchdown purposely extend to 205.
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