The fear coming into Sunday’s game in Seattle was that Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson would continue his early MVP campaign with a lights-out air assault on a shaky Dallas secondary.
Although Wilson did notch five touchdown throws- and missed out on a sixth only because of a boneheaded gaffe by his young wide receiver- Cowboys players and coaches chose instead to pin the 38-31 loss squarely on themselves. There were some big numbers in the Week 3 contest, to be sure, but it was the little things that doomed Dallas at CenturyLink Field.
It was a day that saw one quarterback toss five touchdowns and the other rack up 472 yards. It was a day that featured four 100-yard receivers: one team’s steady-handed star found the end zone three times; the other team had a two-score surprise performance from one of its benchwarmers. A defensive end who was out of football for five years had three sacks. Those kinds of highlight-reel narratives normally tell the story of a game.
But the moments that stick in the collective craw of Cowboys fans this week will be not the big body blows, but the barrage of paper cuts. The missed extra point. The blocked PAT. The muffed kick return (after a Seattle touchdown) that put the offense on its own one-yard line and promptly turned into a safety.
“Those three plays there make it hard to say it was a good day. We were backed up; that was a big play in the game. Obviously gave them momentum,” coach Mike McCarthy told reporters in his postgame remarks. “It was obviously a nine-point swing right there. We’ve got to do a better job. I think, like anything in the game of football, you need a return on investment on what you emphasize. We spend a tremendous amount of time on handling the football, and we need to do a much better job in that area.”
“Everybody’s known for something,” McCarthy said, “and we will always start and stop with the ability to take care of the football and take it away. We haven’t gotten that done the last two weeks. We need to change that quickly.”
All three of the day’s Cowboys turnovers go on the ledger of quarterback Dak Prescott. An interception just before halftime, his first since last Thanksgiving, resulted in a Seahawks touchdown. And a fumble on the first play after halftime put Seattle on the doorstep for another short-field score.
“The first one,” Prescott recounted to the media, “the ball’s just a little behind Coop right there, and the guy makes a great play, jumps the route and comes up with the ball. I can’t do that. Obviously, that results in them getting a touchdown right before half. And then we come out at halftime, and I’m pretty much strip-sacked trying to throw, the ball comes out. Another turnover that results in a touchdown. Simple as that, that’s how you lose games. Me personally, and everybody, we’ve got to be better protecting the ball.”
Despite a boatload of errors on the shores of the Puget Sound, the Cowboys were still in a position to tie the game or even steal a win with just seconds to play. But Prescott was picked off again, this time in the end zone- after breaking what looked like a sure sack- to cement the loss.
Wide receiver Michael Gallup says it never should have come to that.
“It’s not even really just the last plays of the game,” the third-year wideout lamented. “We had some plays that we would love to have back early on. Obviously got a lot of flags called on us this game… It’s not on anybody. It’s a group.
“We’ve just to to make those little plays early on in the game that we’re not getting to count. You’ve got to make them count.”
His quarterback agreed with that assessment, following a lackadaisical season opener against Los Angeles and the Week 2 win over Atlanta that came only after an utter collapse in the first quarter.
“Look at it the last three weeks,” Prescott said. “We’re only stopping ourselves. We’ve got to get out of our own way, be cleaner with the ball, play smarter football, find a way to start faster, whatever it is.”
The Cowboys didn’t necessarily start the game all that poorly right out of the blocks. The defense took the field first and forced Wilson and the Seahawks into a quick three-and-out. Then Prescott drove the offense 55 yards in a clock-chewing drive that ended in a Greg Zuerlein field goal, the team’s first first-quarter points of 2020.
But then Wilson responded with a scoring bomb to Tyler Lockett, the first of his three touchdowns. The ensuing kickoff was mishandled by Tony Pollard and led to the safety, putting Dallas in a 9-3 hole before 10 minutes had elapsed.
Gallup acknowledged the opening-quarter problems that have plagued the Cowboys thus far.
“For most part, I would say everybody’s excited, ready to go. But not everybody at the same time is always locked in on every single little detail. It happens. Everybody gets rowdy, things happen, everybody’s flying around. We’ve just got to be better coming out of the gate.”
“It’s something that you’ve got to keep working on, communicating,” rookie cornerback Trevon Diggs explained. “Jelling with your guys. But I felt like we got the jitters out. We had those three games. Going forward, the details will get cleaned up.”
Diggs showed exceptional attention to detail with his touchdown-saving effort at the end of the first quarter, punching the ball out of DK Metcalf’s arms as he neared the goal line for what he thought was a guaranteed score.
It was one of the few times all afternoon Dallas defenders got the better of Seattle’s receiving corps. Both Metcalf and Lockett topped 100 yards on the day, and tight end Greg Olsen made several clutch catches to extend drives at key moments for the Seahawks.
“People are not supposed to run wide open,” McCarthy commented on his pass defense, promising it will be a focus in the coming week. “That’s what Mondays are for, and we’ll take a hard look at it.”
There are, in fact, several areas that need a hard look. On the stat sheet, a down-to-the-wire one-score loss to the best team in the conference is nothing for a rising team to be ashamed of. But anyone who watched the game saw that the Cowboys did as much to beat themselves as Seattle did.
For a team whose only win came as the result of a lucky fluke, a team who knows they could very easily be 0-3 right now, the close loss feels far more emblematic of deeper issues that have less to do with the opponent… and point instead to an internal flaw that needs to be fixed.
“We’re not a clean football team right now,” McCarthy said. “We need to execute better. We have a number of injuries; we’re working through that. But our rhythm and timing’s not quite where we want it to be, and we’ll continue to work to get that done.”
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