In the end, it cost the Cowboys nothing more than some time. Granted, with a little more time in that situation, maybe Dak Prescott puts together a touchdown drive to close out the half. Maybe the nail-biting back-and-forth at the end and the sketchy clock management and the 56-yard field goal wouldn’t have been necessary; who can say?
But, man, if that botched blocked punt attempt didn’t feel like a bad idea in the moment. Even now, days after the game and despite sneaking out of Los Angeles with a win, the various reactions and explanations for the odd play call aren’t sitting well with fans. Or the team owner.
Special teams coordinator John Fassel may have been the architect behind last season’s famous “watermelon” kick, but head-scratchers like last Thanksgiving’s abysmal fake punt and Sunday’s penalty-inducing punt block are making many in Cowboys Nation wonder how long the team can survive letting “Bones” roll recklessly unchecked in the Dallas gameplan.
The Chargers had gotten to the Dallas 36 with three minutes to play before the end of the first half. An offensive holding call backed them up 10. Keanu Neal stopped a shot pass for a one-yard loss. Leighton Vander Esch sacked Justin Herbert for seven more yards. It was suddenly 4th down and 20, with the ball just a few yards past the midfield stripe. Big win for the defense.
Dallas was about to get the ball back with two minutes to go, two timeouts for Prescott and Co. to work with, and a golden opportunity to add to a three-point lead going into intermission.
When John Fassel decided to bring the house.
Afterward, Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy reviewed the various options for that or any punt play.
“Is it a punt block, is it a punt rush, or is it a return?” McCarthy explained after the game. “Sometimes you have calls that have a combination of both. We had a pick stunt on there, and the object was to drive the personal protector into the punter, because the way they were picking it up.”
But it was rookie defensive end Azur Kamara that ended up in punter Ty Long’s lap, drawing a yellow flag. Los Angeles retained possession, earned a new set of downs, and gained 15 yards.
Thankfully, they went on to miss a field goal attempt nine plays later. The Cowboys had only three seconds left, only time enough for one valiant-but-failed desperation play. No harm, no foul.
Except there had been a foul. A silly one that kept the game closer than it might have been otherwise, caused by a risk that didn’t need to be taken.
And Fassel’s explanation for it during a Monday press conference was downright surreal.
“The thought process was: I think Cowboys fans aren’t the play-it-safe type. So I was going to give them what they wanted, come after their ass on the punt rush. So I hope they’re happy with it.”
That simply can’t be what Fassel meant in a literal sense. Obviously he’s not the play-it-safe-type, but it would be the ultimate negligence for a 47-year-old veteran coordinator to call actual plays in the middle of an NFL game according to what he thinks the fans might like to see.
Fassel didn’t crack so much as a smile when he said it. It’s quite possible he believed the fanbase would truly rally around his decision to bring a Sherman tank to a spitwad fight.
“I think the only way to block a punt is to rush the punt,” he explained. “There’s been a few times, you rough them.”
Fassel has a reputation for being quirky. Just look at his super-detailed vasectomy talk with players during Hard Knocks. He emcees a team-bonding game of Jeopardy! during training camp. He has a somewhat awkward way about him, he likes to tell goofy stories, he loves the guys he loves on his special teams units… and he is unafraid to pull out a drawn-up-in-the-dirt schoolyard play at apparently any given moment.
But even team owner and famed wildcatter Jerry Jones didn’t sound like he was on board with that 4th-and-20 jailbreak rush when he spoke on-air with 105.3 The Fan Tuesday morning.
“To be very candid with you, I’m a little more conservative,” Jones said. “I really like to choose my spots on taking those kind of risks. You take a risk every time you try to block a punt.”
Fassel agreed with that sentiment, at least.
“Anytime you rush the punt, there’s a risk,” he admitted. “But last week, Pittsburgh was up by three points in the fourth quarter, and they rushed the punt and blocked it and ran it in for a touchdown. So the reward is high; the risk is high.”
Fassel reiterated to reporters that being aggressive was part of the plan going into the contest. Then he argued in almost the same breath that the flag thrown on Kamara should have been picked up.
“We came after him,” Fassel said. “It was kind of the mindset going into the game: we’re going to come after this football. And you can sure debate everything, but I’m still not so sure we actually roughed him.”
“I didn’t get an actual jersey number because it was a train wreck right there at the block spot,” Fassel continued. “But what I got on film was that their No. 40 hooked Kamara and pulled him back into the punter. You could make a great case it was holding, or that the punter hit his own blocker. But there was a lot of bodies in that pile. Our goal was to come after him.”
“I think, going into the game, you’ve got a game plan and you never anticipate that, ‘Oh, I didn’t want to pull the trigger because I’m worried about roughing the punter,'” Fassel went on. “Anytime you rush, you’re coming after the football. I could go to the tape and we could sit down and watch it and tell me if it’s roughing. I’m biased. But I think the TV copy shows a pretty good picture of maybe something else.”
Fassel told media members that he planned to have the league review the call.
“Yeah, I’ll be interested to see what they say. But like I said, there was a lot of bodies there.”
Fassel may have a point; the penalty looks plenty questionable. What doesn’t sit well, though, is not whether officials should have waved off the penalty, but whether someone on the Cowboys sideline should have waved off the play call to swarm the punter in the first place. Fassel says ordering the punt rush was his decision alone, and he believes McCarthy was comfortable with Fassel rolling the dice in that situation.
“That’s a good question. I think I would say yes… with an asterisk,” he answered. “I think he was okay with us following the game plan and coming after him. He was probably upset that we roughed them, or that they called roughing.”
But Fassel makes no apologies for the aggressive play.
“Our goal was to come after it, and you could absolutely second-guess it, and I’m okay with that. But part of our game plan was to come after them with a real aggressive mindset, give the Cowboys fans some of what they were looking for.”
Had he been able to stop and take a poll in the moment, what most Cowboys fans would have been looking for on 4th-and-20 was putting the ball back in Prescott’s hands with two minutes to play and a pair of timeouts in his pocket.
Fassel’s blind allegiance to trying wacky special teams plays out of nowhere has become part of his schtick. But McCarthy’s blind allegiance to letting his special teams coordinator go rogue is definitely wearing on the fans that Fassel claims to be trying to please.
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