After a shocking trade on the eve of the NFL regular season, all eyes were on the Dallas Cowboys defense and how they would perform without defensive end Micah Parsons against the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday.
After a shoddy start, the Cowboys’ defense actually held their own in a 24-20 loss to the defending champion Eagles. Dallas’ offense, on the other hand, was arguably much more responsible for the team falling to 0-1 to start the year.
In the first half of Thursday’s game, the Cowboys appeared to be following the script most expected for them after Parsons — one of the game’s elite pass rushers — was traded to the Green Bay Packers on Aug. 28: The offense was humming while the defense was getting sliced up. Dallas scored on each of its first four possessions against Philadelphia, but the defense surrendered three touchdowns on three drives, putting the Cowboys at a 21-20 disadvantage at halftime.
The second half was a different story.
Dallas surrendered only three points in the final 30 minutes, and made up for a lack of pass rush by sending more frequent blitzes to pressure Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts. With a stout secondary, the strategy ultimately paid dividends.
For the game, the Cowboys held Hurts to only 152 yards passing, held star running back Saquon Barkley to only 60 yards rushing (a total that would have been his second lowest last season), and held wideouts DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown to only 24 yards receiving combined.
The strong defensive effort gave Dallas’ offense four opportunities to take the lead in the second half, but Dak Prescott and Co. faltered each time.
On the Cowboys’ first drive of the third quarter, they managed to get inside the Eagles’ 15-yard line before a Miles Sanders fumble gave the ball back to Philadelphia.
On Dallas’s next possession, the team punted following a drop by star receiver CeeDee Lamb on third down — a potential conversion that instead went right through Lamb’s hands.
Then, after both sides traded punts, the Cowboys had the ball trailing 24-20 with 3:02 to go, but turned the ball over on downs after only seven plays. Lamb once again dropped a perfect pass from Prescott during the drive, and on Dallas’ final offensive snap, Lamb couldn’t make a difficult diving play on a 4th-and-3 deep shot down the left sideline.
Prescott started the game on fire, completing 12 of his first 17 passes for 127 yards. But in the second half — in part due to the critical drops — he completed only 9 of 17 attempts for 61 yards.
The defense held up its end of the bargain in crunch time, allowing Philadelphia only 86 yards of offense in the second half.
Of course, if the Cowboys could have stopped the Eagles in the first half, perhaps their margin of error would have been larger in the third and fourth quarters. But considering how widely Dallas was criticized for shipping away Parsons, its defense actually gave the team plenty of opportunities to win Thursday night.
For one game, at least, it was the offense that was lacking in the game’s biggest moments.
The post The Micah Parsons trade didn’t cost the Cowboys on Thursday. Their offense did. appeared first on NBC News.
