Before the 2020 campaign kicked off, Amari Cooper made it plain that the expectation in Dallas was for the Cowboys to have three 1,000-yard receivers by the time the playoffs began.
Then, of course, the season started sideways… and only went south from there.
On Sunday, though, Cowboys fans saw a glimpse of what might have been as Andy Dalton threw for 377 yards in the team’s 37-17 rout of Philadelphia. Along the way, each member of the starting receiving trio- Cooper, Michael Gallup, and CeeDee Lamb- contributed heavily.
“Man… big time,” Gallup gushed as he recapped the game for reporters afterward. “Loads of fun. It was just great to be out there and have a good time. Everybody’s eating, everybody’s having a great time. It was a fun game, and we needed it.”
Gallup had his best yardage total since Week 3 and just the second multi-score game of his pro career. Six catches, 121 yards, two touchdowns… all in the first half. It was the most productive half by a Cowboys receiver in six years.
By the time the Eagles made adjustments to cover Gallup, Dalton had moved on to targeting Cooper and Lamb. Cooper also finished with 121 yards; Lamb had 65 yards plus the long touchdown late that sealed the win.
“We talk about it every week; that’s how it’s really supposed to go,” Gallup explained. “The defense doesn’t know who to double up, who to put their best corner on because it really doesn’t matter. That’s what we know we can do.”
“The more and more opportunities we can give Michael, expand the route tree,” head coach Mike McCarthy said of Gallup in his postgame press conference, “he always produces. Really, the whole perimeter: it’s a matter of trying to get those guys more opportunities, more targets. Michael was huge for us today. I thought Michael, CeeDee, and Amari all played very well.”
“We knew going into the season that a lot of guys on this offense are dangerous,” running back Ezekiel Elliott said in an interview after the game. “From Coop to CeeDee to Mike G to Ced[rick Wilson]- he had a big game this year. Then we’ve got TP [Tony Pollard], who’s a big play waiting to happen. And a great tight end corps with [Dalton] Schultz and Belldozer [Blake Bell]. We’ve got a lot of talent on the outside, and we’re a real problem for secondaries.”
It was a problem that Eagles cornerback Michael Jacquet was unable to solve. The Dallas offensive attack torched the undrafted rookie to the tune of 182 yards and two touchdowns, the second-highest yardage total allowed by a defensive back all season across the league.
Gallup’s first target of the day came against Jacquet. It fell incomplete, but the Louisiana product was called for defensive pass interference. Two series later, Jacquet was flagged again for holding Gallup, but the third-year receiver made the grab anyway.
And that’s when Cooper knew something was about to break for his teammate.
“After my first catch of the game, just a little 10-yard in route,” Gallup recalled, “Coop literally ran up to me and was like, ‘This is your game.'”
“I just felt it,” Cooper said in his postgame remarks. “I just felt it in the air. I just knew that this was the game that he was going to dominate. I actually wanted him to do a lot more. That’s what I felt. The guy was holding him every play from the beginning of the game, and I just know Michael. So I was glad to see him go out there and do his thing.”
Rather than squawk about not getting enough targets, Cooper, Gallup, and Lamb all genuinely support one another. When one of them makes a big catch or posts a monster game, the other two are generally the most excited of all. Instead of fighting one another for balls, each member of the trio recognizes the others’ talents and marvels in their abilities.
“I absolutely love being in the same room as Michael and CeeDee. We all have things; we all have the potential to go out there and dominate a game. It just feels good when you’re all able to do it in the same game, like I alluded to earlier in the season. I think that’s something that we can consistently do.”
It’s what led Cooper to make that declaration that each could top 1,000 yards this season. Cooper has done it already. The rookie Lamb is 108 yards away. Gallup trails the group with a still-very-respectable 794. The fact that they’ve compiled those numbers with four different quarterbacks this season is a testament to how good they truly are.
With Dak Prescott at the helm all season- on anything close to the torrid pace he had set when he went down in Week 5- it’s easy to imagine Cooper’s prediction would have come true.
It’s taken some time for Dalton to warm up in the Cowboys offense; missing time with a concussion and COVID-19 certainly didn’t help. But his play in recent weeks has been a major contributing factor to the three-game winning streak that Dallas is enjoying.
Dalton’s 377 passing yards Sunday represented his highest one-game total in a calendar year. And his 134.7 quarterback rating? That’s his best since Week 4 of the 2017 season, and one of the ten best of the 33-year-old’s career.
“We were clicking,” Dalton told media members after the victory. “We got a bunch of different guys involved early on: Michael Gallup had several big plays, then later on, Amari gets a couple big ones, and CeeDee gets involved. When you can spread it around and guys are making plays all over the field, obviously it gives you the chance to go down and score a bunch of points. Fortunately for us, we were able to get that done today.”
Cooper says the time he and the other receivers have been able to spend with Dalton in the months since Prescott’s injury has made all the difference.
“I would just attribute it to repetition,” the four-time Pro Bowler said. “When Dak first went down, obviously, the first-team guys at receiver, we hadn’t had much experience with Andy. But since then, obviously, he’s been taking all the first-team reps, and we’ve just been able to learn each other, the way he likes to throw the ball. And obviously, he’s been able to learn the way we like to run our routes.”
That familiarity allowed Dalton to largely sit back on Sunday- he was sacked just twice- and deal passes to whichever receiver had the hot hand.
On this occasion, that happened to be Gallup… but the Colorado State alum would have been just as happy to see one of his receiving mates beef up their stats.
“CeeDee and Amari Cooper are closer to a thousand yards than I am,” Gallup noted with a smile, “so I’m hoping that they get all the catches they need to get to get to a thousand yards. I love seeing that. Amari Cooper was streaking down the field, CeeDee was streaking down the field; it’s just fun to watch. I’ve already been streaking down the field, so I’m not really sure I need any more catches, to be honest. But I’ll take them if they come my way.”
If the Cowboys offense keeps clicking like this, the catches will most certainly keep coming Gallup’s way. And Cooper’s way. And Lamb’s.
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