Cowboys right tackle La’el Collins wasn’t even in uniform last October when the man he would have been protecting was laid out by a cheap shot in the team’s 2020 visit to Washington. He was watching on TV when backup quarterback Andy Dalton took a head shot mid-slide from WFT linebacker Jon Bostic, a move that got Bostic ejected but saw no response from the Dallas offensive line.
So when Washington linebacker William Bradley-King shoved Dak Prescott out of bounds on Sunday and then tumbled dangerously close to the passer’s reconstructed ankle, Collins wasn’t about to let it go. As running back Ezekiel Elliott gave the defender a shove, Collins came in hot with a thunderous body blow.
“It wasn’t really the late hit for me,” Collins said afterward. “It was more so, I felt like he was rolling towards Dak’s legs and stuff like that. It was uncalled for. I’m just here to protect my quarterback at all costs, and that’s the bottom line.”
WFT got 15 free yards on the personal foul, and Collins got tossed from the game. It forced the Cowboys to go to a backup for the rest of the fourth quarter as Washington tried to mount a furious comeback. But in the moments after the Cowboys salvaged a seven-point win, Collins received public attaboys from his quarterback and head coach.
“I’m just trying to make a play,” Prescott told reporters in a Sunday press conference. “Felt like it close, on the call. I turned back just to look at the ref and just saw a lot going on. I can’t say that I saw details or know exactly what happened, but I obviously respect and love the fact that my teammates are standing up for me. That’s just how all of us feel about one another. That’s just not them protecting me, but that’s how any one of us would protect any of our brothers and our teammates in that position. Yeah, I’m thankful for those guys.”
“I think L.C. did exactly what you’re supposed to do there,” Mike McCarthy said in his postgame remarks. “We all understand the challenges of officiating, whatever you thought of the play all the way around. This is a game and, obviously, very competitive. The fact that it’s your quarterback, or whoever. You know these games will be chippy; they’re division games.”
La'el Collins is ejected for throwing a punch at the end of the play after a presumed late hit on his QB. (It wasn't late.) pic.twitter.com/NuwDtGIs06
— Fᴏᴏᴛʙᴀʟʟ Zᴇʙʀᴀs (@footballzebras) December 12, 2021
McCarthy’s use of the phrase “whatever you thought of the play all the way around” is key. (Even Prescott thought “it was close, on the call.”) Because the hit on Prescott actually wasn’t late. And Bradley-King didn’t appear to try roll up on Prescott at all.
But when Washington and Dallas get together, details like that frequently don’t matter. Any excuse to start a little something with a member of the hated rivals.
It should also be remembered that Prescott came to Collins’s defense earlier this season as the lineman appealed his five-game suspension for attempting to bribe a league drug-test-sample collector. So if there were any Cowboys player who was going to have Prescott’s back- even on a completely legal shove out of bounds- it would naturally be Collins.
McCarthy will praise the show of team unity, penalty and ejection or not. He even looked like he was smirking a bit when it happened. And he was vocal last year about his players not responding to the brutal hit on Dalton.
Collins is likely to be fined by the league. And Prescott may well pitch in to stroke the check as a thank-you.
“I just told him I appreciate it,” Prescott said. “I told him right there in the moment, as they were taking him out of the game. I told him how I felt about him as a brother and as a teammate, and I just reiterated that in the locker room.”
For Collins, it was a message he may have been waiting a long time to deliver to Washington, ever since that day last October when no one came to the defense of a Cowboys passer at FedEx Field.
“I was at home, in my bed, when I saw that play [on Dalton],” Collins recalled on Sunday. “Man, it just irked me. It made me feel some kind of way. You don’t take cheap shots on guys. We don’t play that type of game. We just line it up, and we go out there, and we play ball. We don’t play dirty, we don’t do none of that. But at the end of the day, we’re not going to take no [expletive].”
And that’s a message the Cowboys faithful are glad to see their team finally broadcasting to the rest of the league.
Expect it to be re-broadcast in two weeks when Washington comes to AT&T Stadium for the rematch.
[listicle id=688006]
[listicle id=687939]
[vertical-gallery id=688007]
[lawrence-newsletter]