Cowboys Nation would like to respectfully request that all future trips to Glendale to face the Cardinals be canceled. The team’s latest visit to State Farm Stadium, as has been the case so many times before, was a thoroughly frustrating affair, this one ending in a disappointing 28-16 loss.
The first half of Sunday’s Week 3 game in Arizona couldn’t have gone much worse. The scene was set 90 minutes before kickoff when the club declared Zack Martin and Tyler Biadasz inactive with injuries. Then a third OL starter- Tyron Smith- was standing on the sideline when the offense took the field for the first time. The offense was largely uninspired, the defense gave up multiple big plays on the ground, and the winless Cardinals shocked Dallas by scoring on their first five possessions. Penalties proved to be a major bugaboo, too, as the Cowboys racked up a whopping 11 penalties… all before intermission.
The tide seemingly started to turn in the third quarter, highlighted by a brilliant Dak Prescott scramble that extended a deep Dallas drive. While it ended in a short field goal rather than a touchdown, momentum continued to shift the Cowboys’ way after an electrifying punt return by KaVontae Turpin. That big play was called back by yet another Dallas penalty, though, and a chance to close the scoring gap was denied by a 4th-and-goal play that went nowhere. Micah Parsons finally closed out the third quarter with a ferocious sack of Cardinals QB Joshua Dobbs (and his new signature celebration, which the linebacker has named “The Doomsday Death Crawl”), and Cowboys fans had hope it was a sign of the fourth-quarter rally to come.
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But more poor play calls in the red zone kept the Cowboys in neutral and settling for field goals, while the Cards put the pedal to the metal. Dobbs connected with Michael Wilson for a 69-yard explosive in which the Dallas secondary was completely lost, and Arizona punched the ball into the end zone shortly thereafter. Down by two scores with seven minutes to play, Prescott drove the offense into the red zone, but he then threw his first interception of the season to effectively shut the door on any sort of comeback effort.
The Cowboys ended with a staggering 13 penalties and gave up 222 rushing yards. That- and Prescott’s crunch-time pick at the goal line- will be the talk all week in Big D.
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