Tag: Dallas Cowboys vs. Cincinnati Bengals

‘Trying to make a play’: Cowboys come to teammate’s defense after costly blocked punt mistake

From @ToddBrock24f7: The mishandling of a blocked punt decided the outcome of Week 14’s game, but Amani Oruwariye’s teammates don’t want it to define him.

Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy put it bluntly during his postgame press conference Monday night.

“This one stings.”

But the most painful part is, this particular bug has bitten Cowboys fans before.

Amani Oruwariye’s mishandling of a blocked punt gave the ball back to the Bengals with under two minutes to play in a tie game. Instead of the offense trying to better navigate for a walk-off winning field goal, the defense ended up allowing Cincinnati to score the deciding touchdown just a few snaps later.

It was a gut-wrenching turn of events for the Cowboys, now 5-8, that left the locker room “really devastated,” according to owner Jerry Jones.

“That mistake we made at the end was very impactful, is all I can say.”

Jones hinted in his traditional tunnel Q&A session that the coaching staff had a block-attempt called on the fateful fourth-down play, but McCarthy explained otherwise.

“We actually had a return called,” McCarthy told media members. “The tackle released, the guard went down. The B-gap was exposed. Nick [Vigil, linebacker] took it, and we were able to get the block.”

It was a fortuitous moment, until the deflected ball went beyond the line of scrimmage. Left alone, it would have been whistled dead. Dallas would have taken over, already within the range of kicker Brandon Aubrey.

Instead, Oruwariye, the cornerback who had just re-joined the active roster a few hours earlier, tried to reel in the bouncing ball. When he was unable to, the ball became live again, and the Bengals recovered for a fresh set of downs without having to advance it past the original line to gain.

McCarthy said Oruwariye was simply taken by surprise when the ball ended up in front of him, and the six-year veteran didn’t hear the Cowboys sideline- all the way across the field and 50 yards away- yelling the “poison” command that signals to leave the ball alone.

“He understands the rule of crossing, once the ball crosses the line,” the coach explained after the 27-20 loss. “His response when he turned, when he heard the crowd: the ball was there, and he reacted to it.”

“That’s a play that happens not very often,” McCarthy said. “Definitely a tough learning opportunity.”

Cowboys fans, however, were able to immediately recall two other occasions where the same set of circumstances cost them dearly.

The most infamous was Leon Lett’s botched recovery of a blocked field goal versus Miami on Thanksgiving 1993. After the batted kick skittered around on the snow-covered Texas Stadium turf and past the line of scrimmage, Lett tried to pounce on it and slipped. The Dolphins regained possession and kicked a game-winning field goal on the next snap.

More recently, Nahshon Wright muffed a blocked punt after it, too, crossed the line of scrimmage, in a 2021 game against Denver. Down 16-0 at the time, Wright was trying to turn the tide of the game with a return for a touchdown. Instead, the demoralized Cowboys got further manhandled and lost by a 30-16 final.

This felt like déjà vu all over again.

But while the play ultimately decided the outcome of the Week 14 game, Oruwariye’s teammates refuse to let the moment to define him.

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Micah Parsons was visibly distraught in the aftermath of Oruwariye’s flub. Other Cowboys players struggled to explain what had happened. McCarthy and Jones were clearly disappointed. Special teams coordinator John Fassel will undoubtedly be grilled about it the next time he takes the podium.

Several of Oruwariye’s teammates came to his defense, though, even with the heartbreaking loss still raw and fresh.

Longtime Cowboys special teams ace C.J. Goodwin was there for Wright’s gaffe three years ago and even shielded the rookie from reporters afterward. He did the same thing for Oruwariye after Monday night’s loss.

“Y’all think it’s football 
 but there’s life outside of football,” Goodwin said, per the team website. “When I see my man going through something mentally, I’m not going to have [the media] bringing up the play over and over. We’re not going to do that.”

Cornerback Jourdan Lewis also tried to put the mishap- merely the latest in a series of bad breaks that have defined the Cowboys’ 2024 season- into a larger perspective.

“Big plays happen, and everybody sees it,” Lewis said. “We have to stay with [Oruwariye] and keep encouraging him. We don’t want that moment to define him. We have to stay behind him. That’s just football. Some things roll your way, and some things don’t. I can’t blame him trying to make a play.”

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‘More severe than an ACL’: Promising young Cowboys LB suffers devastating knee injury

From @ToddBrock24f7: A serious knee injury Monday night left his teammates devastated, but DeMarvion Overshown himself is already eyeing his next comeback.

One of the few bright spots in the Cowboys’ gloomy 2024 season has been snuffed out. And while the darkness may linger for some time, the player at the center of it is already igniting a new flicker of hope.

DeMarvion Overshown, the promising second-year linebacker who was playing in just his 13th game as a pro, went down with a leg injury during the fourth quarter of Monday night’s gut-wrenching 27-20 loss to Cincinnati.

This injury may be even worse than the preseason ACL tear that cost him his entire rookie campaign in 2023.

“It’s of serious nature, I’m told, that’s really all I know,” Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said after the game, per the team website. “It didn’t look good.”

Overshown entered the contest as the team’s second-leading tackler, with more sacks- five- than any Cowboys defender apart from Micah Parsons, with a team-best eight tackles for loss, and having recorded the only interception return for a touchdown of Dallas’s season so far.

But when his right leg was rolled up on by Bengals center Ted Karras, it was cause for immediate concern. Cowboys teammates quickly called for assistance, and Overshown was taken directly to the locker room with help from two team trainers. He was ruled out of the remainder of the contest within minutes.

Clarence Hill Jr. of AllCity DLLS reports that the team believes that Overshown “ruptured several ligaments in his knee” and that the injury is “more severe than an ACL.”

Overshown’s 2023 ACL tear was in his left knee.

Although Overshown will undergo further testing on Tuesday, the gravity of the former Longhorn’s injury was already obvious to the rest of the Cowboys locker room.

Parsons was visibly shaken while speaking with reporters about the teammate he’s taken to calling his “little bro.”

“I cried,” Parsons said. “He don’t deserve that, either. He really don’t. To just understand what he’s going to go through- physically and mentally- it’s so challenging. He’s so talented. The year he was having, I mean, I really just don’t think that’s fair.”

Veteran linebacker Eric Kendricks acknowledged that injuries are a part of the game but admitted that seeing Overshown go down was especially tough.

“I’m just feeling for him right now,” he said. “I know how hard he works, and it means a lot to him. Means a lot to me. It’s not really fair. Football is not really fair. You never know.”

“I know it definitely hit a lot of the guys,” McCarthy said.

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It hit Overshown, too. The Texas native gave an update on social media late Monday night that hinted at the severity of his latest injury.

“Wouldn’t want this for anyone else!” he posted. “One of God’s Toughest Soldiers (prayer hands emoji) Keep me in your prayers…”

By Tuesday morning, though, he was already on the comeback trail, at least mentally. An X influencer account called Attack! on Cowboys posted, “hoping DeMarvion Overshown doesn’t become one of the greatest ‘what if’ stories of all time.”

Overshown himself offered a short and sweet response.

“Guarantee I won’t.”

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Will the Dallas Cowboys be featured this week on Hard Knocks?

The close-up look at how teams prepare for their opponent and things that happen in a game that matters brings the Cowboys into focus for Week 14.

The NFL has added two new wrinkles to their Hard Knocks franchise in 2024. Every summer, fans are able to track the happenings of one team during their training camp build up to the regular season. This year Max (formerly HBO) added a look at the offseason component when it profiled the New York Giants through free agency and the draft.

And starting last week, fans got their first in-season view of football operations as Hard Knocks profiles the four teams in the AFC North. The premiere episode came out last week as it looked at closely at the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals before their head-to-head matchup, and the Baltimore Ravens as they got set to face the Phiadelphia Eagles.

With the Dallas Cowboys hosting the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 14, it stands to reason they could make an appearance on the show’s second episode.

The Cleveland Browns took on the Denver Broncos in Week 13, but were not featured in the game action that spanned the last third of the episode. That game, like the Cowboys’ gut-punch, 27-20 loss to the Bengals, was a Monday Night Football affair. If the logic is that game was too late to be included in the episode, it stands to reason Dallas’ game won’t see any airtime on Episode 2, and would potentially be part of Episode 3 when the Bengals are profiled.

Cowboys open roof for ‘Monday Night Football’… without incident this time

From @ToddBrock24f7: Three weeks after a piece of metal crashed to the playing surface hours before a game, the Cowboys have opened their roof for Week 14.

With a two-game win streak under the Cowboys’ belt, the sky is no longer falling in Dallas.

And now as the team gears up for a Week 14 primetime bout with the Bengals, neither is the roof over their heads.

The retractable roof at AT&T Stadium has been opened for the Monday night matchup, just three weeks after a large piece of sheet metal crashed to the playing surface hours before the team’s Nov. 18 game against the Texans.

No one was hurt in that incident, and the roof was closed in plenty of time for the evening’s game, which Dallas lost by a 34-10 score. The piece of metal turned out to be a covering lid to a cable tray located within the inner workings of the roof. High winds in the area that day had loosened the lid, and a heavy gust sent it flying only a couple hours prior to kickoff.

Crews later determined that there were no structural issues with the stadium. The venue stayed open and then hosted another game Thanksgiving Day, although the roof remained closed.

The Monday forecast in Arlington called for temperatures around 56 degrees at kickoff after a sunny and wday in the area.

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The roof at the 15-year-old stadium has been open for less than 25% of all Cowboys home games since its grand opening. Monday night will mark the first time it’s been left open for a Cowboys game since Oct. 30, 2022.

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What channel is the Cowboys’ game against the Bengals on today?

The viewing audience will have several options on how to consume Cowboys-Bengals thanks to alternate MNF broadcasts.

The Dallas Cowboys (5-7) are set to host the Cincinnati Bengals (4-8) on Monday Night Football in Week 14 of the 2024 NFL season on Monday, Dec. 9 at 7:15 p.m. CT (8:15 p.m. ET).

The inter conference showdown of bad teams will be nationally televised on ESPN and available to stream on fuboTV. There will be multiple alternative ways to keep fans engaged as well.

Joe Buck will handle the play-by-play duties while Troy Aikman will handle the color commentary. Lisa Salters reporting from the sideline.

Those alternatives may add enough to keep fans viewing. One of the regular season’s 10 ManningCasts will be happening on ESPN2, the final one of the year before they come back during the wild-card round.

Also, ESPN+, Disney+ and NFL+ on mobile will be airing an animated, Simpsons infused version of the game, with Bart repping the Bengals and Homer going up for the Cowboys. Homer, home team… get it?

This will be the next-to-last primetime game for Dallas this season, more than likely. There is still time for the NFL to switch things up and take the December 22 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers out of the Sunday Night Football window and move it to earlier in the day.

FOX currently has the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders in their early-game window and the Minnesota Vikings against the Seattle Seahawks in the late-game window.

If NBC is willing to grab either of those two competitive games between playoff squads and give up the ratings bonanza that is the Cowboys whether good or bad, they can do so. FOX can only protect one game per week.

That decision will have to come by Tuesday, December 10.

Why anyone predicting Cowboys-Bengals to be flexed from MNF is probably wrong

Two important factors may be in play that keeps the NFL from saving a prime-time audience from watching two floundering franchises. Blame byes and blame Bart.

The Dallas Cowboys are “ungood”. The Cincinnati Bengals are more competitive, but still “ungood”. It makes zero sense to keep what was anticipated to be a high-profile matchup between playoff contenders, back when the schedule was being defined in the spring, as the Monday Night Football matchup for Week 14.

The NFL has until next Tuesday, November 26, to move this game, but they won’t. Joe Burrow playing at an MVP level is not enough reason to keep this game in its slot. The fact that more than half the football universe despises the Cowboys and loves to see them flail embarrassingly isn’t enough reason either. The teams are a combined 6-15 entering this weekend and in any other scenario, their miserable play would send them up to the late-afternoon Sunday slot at worst, potentially deserving of a noon kickoff.

No, the only thing saving this game is Bart. Bart Simpson, that is.

On Monday, ESPN and Disney released the latest promo for their annual Funday broadcast, a simulcast where the game will be shown in Simpsons-themed animation to try and bring the NFL to a younger audience.

And while the promo has swapped out Prescott for Cooper Rush, it realistically seems the lift would be much too heavy for an upheaval of their months of preparations for this particular matchup.

NFL flex rules allow Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football (starting in Week 12) to swap out a bad matchup for a better one. FOX and CBS Sports are allowed to protect one game each week, but NBC and ESPN have the right to snatch any other game.

Perhaps the worst thing about it is, if the alt-cast really is preventing the league from flexing the game out, it’s not even a viable data point for where the bar is to flex out a Cowboys game. It’s a case where both teams could have poor records and be out of playoff contention, which has rarely been the case for past bad Cowboys games, but unlike with the one Cowboys game that did get flexed out, there shouldn’t be a risk that both teams will be eliminated from the playoffs entirely by the time the game kicks off, so there’s no way of knowing whether that situation would be enough for a flex in the future. We may never know if the only reason Bengals-Cowboys shows up on ESPN’s air in two and a half weeks is for the sake of an alt-cast that should get a fraction of the game’s audience. – Morgan Wick

Week 14 was weird to begin with, the NFL scheduling a whopping six teams with byes, making the pool of potential matchups difficult to begin with. Baltimore, Washington, Houston and Denver are all currently above .500 but taking that week off.

Green Bay and Detroit is on Thursday Night Football and the Chiefs-Chargers tilt is on SNF already. Falcons-Vikings, 49ers-Bears, and Bills-Rams are the only other intriguing matchups in Week 14 and at least two of those would be protected.

So aside from all of the man hours that would be thrown in the toilet on the pre-production side, none of those games would likely bring in enough of an audience to justify the change.

So Bengals-Cowboys is likely to remain on Monday Night Football in Week 14.

Fans should check back in two weeks from now to see about the Cowboys-Buccaneers Week 16 tilt currently scheduled for SNF, though.

Cowboys vs Bengals to get ‘The Simpsons’ treatment in special Week 14 stream

From @ToddBrock24f7: The two teams will square off using characters from the long-running show; real-time animation will help set the game in Springfield.

America’s Team is meeting America’s longest-running primetime scripted series.

The Cowboys’ Week 14 game — a Dec. 9 Monday night meeting with the Cincinnati Bengals —will feature an alternate broadcast set in the world of “The Simpsons,” it was announced during the Steelers’ win over the Giants to wrap up Week 8.

The NFL, ESPN, and Disney teamed up to present a similar “Toy Story” edition of a game last season starring the Falcons and Jaguars.

This season’s chapter of the experiment will have Homer Simpson and the Cowboys taking on son Bart and the Bengals using Sony’s Beyond Sports technology to provide a real-time simulcast of the actual game using characters and settings from the iconic animated series.

Marge and Lisa will interview players during the game and Maggie will fly the SkyCam for the Simpson-ized version of the game, set to be played in Atoms Stadium in Springfield while the real action takes place inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Animated versions of ESPN’s Mina Kimes and Dan Orlovsky will provide commentary, while Drew Carter will handle play-by-play duties. “The Simpsons Funday Football” will stream on Disney+, ESPN+, and NFL+.

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The regular version will air, as usual with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the call, on ESPN and ABC’s “Monday Night Football.” Peyton and Eli Manning will do their alt-cast of the night’s action on ESPN2.

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‘No room to give’: Cowboys DC Dan Quinn praises game-changing tackle by Trevon Diggs, even after tech meltdown

With the defense in need of one last stop, the NFL’s 2021 interception leader stepped up, despite a tech malfunction that caused a scramble. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Leading into Sunday’s Week 2 game, the Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase gave a scouting report on Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs that was less than flattering. While praising Diggs’s athleticism, speed, and ball skills, Chase specifically dinged the 2021 interception leader’s coverage techniques, calling him “a little hit or miss.”

In the end, though, it was Chase who was largely missing from the final box score. And it was a Diggs hit that made the Cowboys’ 20-17 last-second victory possible.

According to Pro Football Focus, Diggs was brilliant in coverage when he was against Chase, allowing last year’s Offensive Rookie of the Year just two catches for 14 yards. (Chase had five receptions for 54 yards total.)

But the talk in Cowboys Nation was Diggs’s solo tackle on a critical third-down play late in the game, forcing a Cincinnati punt and setting up Cooper Rush and the Dallas offense for the final game-winning drive.

“What impressed me so much on that one,” Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn said of Diggs Monday, “was just the aggressive nature to go finish. To me, that’s what a real competitor does: when it’s right there, at the moment, how are you going to go get it on? It was a 3rd-and-3, and in that space there is no room to give. You’ve got to go, defend them, and play it. That was one of my favorite plays in the game.”

But it was a play that almost went off the rails for the Dallas defense before it even started. Quinn revealed that an equipment snafu caused a bit of a scramble on the sideline and in the huddle in the moments leading up to the ball being snapped.

“What you don’t know is on that third-down play, the headsets went off. So we were not able to call in a play like you normally would,” Quinn explained. “I saw [Cincinnati] scrambling, too. I knew both teams didn’t have the player-to-helmet communication.”

“Coach-to-coach ones still worked,” he continued. “This was specifically my communication to the helmet.”

That meant that safety Malik Hooker, who was wearing the green dot in place of the injured Jayron Kearse, was receiving no instructions from Quinn in the seconds just before the massively important third-down play with less than two minutes in regulation.

And Hooker was getting radio silence from his coordinator.

“‘It’s not working, it’s not working,’ Quinn recalled realizing. “We signaled, called it coach-to-coach, then he signaled to the guys. It was definitely later than normal.”

But the sideline got Quinn’s booth call relayed to Hooker in time for him and the defense to execute.

“It was the right call,” Quinn confirmed.

“That’s a good feeling to know that Malik knew he didn’t have me so he [looks to the sideline for] a call,” he continued. “Sometimes in practice I’ll do that where I don’t give them a call, so they just have to make the one I would do in this check. Somebody’s on the ball, I don’t give them a call, they’re looking at me, I don’t have one, and I’m like, ‘This is that time.’ That’s an example of how we would try to plan for when those moments happen.”

The DC admits his unit probably wouldn’t have been able to react so seamlessly at this time last year. Just another bonus to keeping the defense together for a second year under his command.

In fact, Quinn said the team practiced just such a scenario in this summer’s training camp, with head coach Mike McCarthy announcing, “Headsets; headsets are out,” and the sideline goes into what Quinn describes as 911 mode.

“Putting yourself into that moment, expecting there’s going to be some adversity that comes along is good,” said Quinn. “It was chaotic, but I knew we would get the call in.”

What no one could really know, though, as Bengals receiver Tyler Boyd hauled in the short pass from Joe Burrow, was whether Diggs, the only man standing between Boyd and the first-down marker, would make the solo tackle before he got there.

Diggs played it in textbook fashion, wrapping up Boyd and riding him to the turf for a one-yard gain, pinning Cincinnati deep and forcing a punt that ultimately put Dallas kicker Brett Maher in position to win the game with a 50-yard field goal.

“We just needed a stop,” Diggs told reporters afterward. But Diggs actually made two stops; he also held running back Joe Mixon to just three yards on the previous pass play.

“I was like, ‘Let me go make these plays and get the offense back on the field and let’s go win this thing,” he said. “The drive before, I had given up a catch. I was kind of mad about that. I wanted to go out there and make a play for my team.”

His team noticed, even if they were a bit surprised that the game’s biggest tackle came from the guy whose real specialty is interceptions.

“We even said that’s the hardest we’ve ever seen Diggs tackle,” linebacker Micah Parsons joked in the locker room. “He shot out like a cannon. I was proud of him, myself. When I saw that was 7, I was shocked for a second. But that was huge momentum. Way to get off the field, three and out.”

“Tackling… is one that we work on hard to make sure that part of our game comes to life. When we’re going through it, whether it’s on the edge, in the perimeter, in-line, we do a number of different types of tackles. I think it’s one of those things you always work on,” said Quinn. “Those were things we highlighted during the week. This is how low you have to tackle. This is what we have to get done. I was pleased to see that.”

And with the Giants’ bulldozing rusher Saquon Barkley on the docket for Monday night, the Cowboys will look to see more solid tackling from their defense.

They’ll also hope the headsets remain operational… even though they’ve shown Quinn they know how to handle a tech malfunction.

“That added a little bit of extra to make it little more fun.”

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Cowboys TE Dalton Schultz has PCL injury; unclear if he’ll miss time

The fifth-year tight end’s status for Week 3 is up in the air; the team will monitor him this week to see how he responds to rest and rehab. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Dalton Schultz and Cowboys Nation got good news on Monday, or at least news that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But it leaves the tight end’s status for Monday’s Week 3 game in New York in some degree of doubt.

The fifth-year veteran playing on the franchise tag has a PCL injury, according to reports. While he will avoid missing significant time, it’s not clear if he’ll be able to suit up for the team’s next contest against the division rival Giants.

Schultz suffered the right knee injury in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 20-17 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. While initial reports indicated that his ACL was not compromised, the 26-year-old underwent an MRI to get a more detailed diagnosis. That exam showed a less serious PCL injury.

The Cowboys have said they will monitor Schultz throughout the week to see how it responds to rest and rehab.

Running back Ezekiel Elliott suffered a PCL injury in Week 4 of last season, but managed to play through the condition for the remainder of the schedule.

Schultz led the Cowboys in receptions in Week 1, catching seven passes in the opening night loss to Tampa Bay. He was less involved in this weekend’s meeting with the Bengals, catching two balls on four targets for 18 yards before the injury.

What most fans will likely remember more from Week 2 was Schultz’s third-quarter fumble. It came on a 9-yard catch and run in which Schultz had already reached the line to gain and was fighting for an extra yard.

If the Stanford product cannot play Monday, the club will turn to rookies Jake Ferguson and Peyton Hendershot. Ferguson saw 34 offensive snaps versus Cincinnati (56% of the unit’s plays) while the undrafted Hendershot was in on just seven offensive plays. Neither has been targeted in the passing game in 2022.

Schultz played 90% of the Cowboys’ offensive snaps on Sunday. He recorded 14 catches on 16 targets for 146 yards and a touchdowns in two clashes last season against the Giants.

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Twitter reacts to Cowboys 20-17 win over the Cincinnati Bengals

The Bengals entered as a heavy betting favorite to beat Dallas but Cooper Rush, Micah Parsons and Twitter had something to say about that. | From @ProfessorO_NFL

Following a Week 1performance that saw the Cowboys lose several key starters and score just three points, the team headed into Week 2 with a new starting quarterback, strong safety and left guard against a Cincinnati Bengals team that made a Super Bowl run in 2021. Both clubs entered the game looking to avoid an 0-2 start.  The Cowboys’ offense had it’s share of big performances from Cooper Rush, Tony Pollard, CeeDee Lamb and Noah Brown while the defense carried the load, sacking Bengals QB Joe Burrow six times and holding Cincinnati to just 17 points in a gutsy performance.

The Bengals entered the game as a heavy betting favorite but several key performers had something to say about that. The effort resulted in a thoroughly enjoyable game, and the reactions on Twitter matched the vibes. Here’s a look at this week’s best reactions.