5 points: Observations from the Cowboys win in Week 5

The Cowboys are now 3-0 on the road for the first time since the 2016 season.

Like the weather in Pittsburgh before the game, the Dallas Cowboys didn’t look pretty, and it was borderline troublesome overall. But somehow, the rain and the mistakes slowed down enough for the Cowboys to beat the Steelers 20-17 in the grittiest win of the season.

Quarterback Dak Prescott was far from perfect, but when he needed to put the team on his back after injuries to key players continued to plague this team, Prescott delivered. He hit Jalen Tolbert for the go-ahead touchdown with seconds to play in the fourth quarter on a gutsy fourth-down play.

There is still a lot to clean up, but you take the wins when you can get them in a much more competitive NFC East than initially anticipated. Here are five observations from the Cowboys Week 5 victory.

First Point: Career nights for Jalen Tolbert and Rico Dowdle

Just when the week leading up to Sunday’s game could not get worse, the Cowboys received news that wide receiver Brandin Cooks was dealing with an infection in his knee that would land him on injured reserve for at least four weeks.

Dallas would be heading into Pittsburgh without an identity running the football and without Micah Parsons, DeMarcus Lawrence, and their No. 2 wide receiver. During Jason Garrett’s era as head coach, he consistently preached a “next man up” mentality when their stars would miss time.

That saying never goes in the Cowboys’ favor as it does with teams like the Kansas City Chiefs or the San Francisco 49ers. However, on Sunday night, Dallas got huge contributions from Jalen Tolbert and Rico Dowdle.

For a few weeks now, it looked like Dowdle was finding his groove and trending towards becoming the team’s bell-cow on offense. He had yet to escape the running back by committee approach, but against the Steelers, Dowdle showed he could carry the workload and make the offense better.

Dowdle had 20 carries for almost 90 rushing yards on top of his 22-yard touchdown reception late in the game. It’s the first time since Week 3 of last year that a Cowboys running back rushed for over 87 yards. Dallas desperately needed a performance like that from Dowdle.

For Tolbert, it was also a career night needing to step up in a big spot in the absence of Cooks. The third-year wideout has been slowly developing since his rookie season, but many fans have been hoping for more up to this point. After coming off his best offseason as a Cowboy, it seemed a performance like Sunday night was just around the corner.

Tolbert led the Dallas offense in targets (10), receptions (7), yards (87), and had the longest catch of the night for 48 yards. On the final drive of the game, Tolbert was injured on the second to last play after a Prescott pass.

If it were not for a Pittsburgh timeout, Tolbert might not have been in on fourth down, clearly needing a minute to collect himself. The timeout gave the young wideout enough time to recover enough to get open on the offense’s final play of the game for the go-ahead touchdown.

With Cooks sidelined for a few more weeks, Tolbert will have the time to show everyone his performance was not a fluke in big-time games against the Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers.

Second Point: The defense is turning a corner toward success

It is tough to find statistics on offenses where the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers appear near the top of the list. That said, seeing the way Dallas’ defense put the clamps on New York’s and Pittsburgh’s attack on offense should be, at the very least, a confidence boost for the unit.

This is the same defense that gave up a combined 888 yards of offense against the New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Ravens. It was good to see them right the ship even if the schedule helped them out with matchups against the Giants and Steelers.

Mike Zimmer’s defense effectively contained the Pittsburgh run game despite a few minor setbacks. They executed a solid plan to limit Justin Fields to just 27 rushing yards, with his longest scramble being eight yards.

Fields is not the best pocket passer in the league, but the Dallas secondary didn’t allow him and wide receiver George Pickens to heat up. Fields had 131 yards passing, and Pickens was targeted seven times for three receptions and 26 yards.

The Lions will arguably be the toughest overall matchup for the Cowboys this season, as they have been dominant in their running and passing offense. If the previous two weeks were nothing more than a much-needed morale boost, hopefully, the Cowboys can find a way to carry that momentum into their game against Detroit on Sunday.

Third Point: Dallas matches the attitude of Pittsburgh

Mike McCarthy, a Pittsburgh native, has always aimed to instill his hometown’s tough and aggressive mindset into the Cowboys as a football team. After their Week 1 beatdown of the Cleveland Browns, it looked like his message had finally reached the locker room.

However, after two rough losses at home and a less-than-stellar performance against the New York Giants, it was fair to wonder if the Pittsburgh mentality had fallen on deaf ears. Not on Sunday night.

The Cowboys did everything possible to lose the game through penalties and turnovers. History shows that Dallas doesn’t usually end up in the win column when it is minus three in the turnover battle. Yet, the team found a way to fight, scratch, and claw its way back against the team that embodies the mindset of Dallas’ head coach.

It was as impressive and frustrating a win as one can remember for McCarthy’s tenure so far in Dallas. Even after losing two more players during the game, Tyler Guyton and Marshawn Kneeland, all 22 players stepped up when necessary.

The team’s ability to come out on top despite the odds against them speaks volumes about the roster’s character. Let’s hope the same resiliency continues throughout the season.

Fourth Point: CeeDee Lamb can’t be Houdini in the second half

It’s the Halloween season, but the offense should avoid forcing CeeDee Lamb’s costume to be Harry Houdini. It’s become a recurring theme since the beginning of the year, but Lamb continues to disappear from the game script in the second half of games.

Through Week 5, Lamb has 21 receptions, 353 yards, and two touchdowns in the first half. In the second, Dallas’ star has just four receptions for 25 yards—that is it. At the start of last year, the offense could not find a clear path to getting their No. 1 player on offense the ball. After their bye week, Lamb went nuclear toward an All-Pro season.

Missing training camp this offseason could be playing a role in Lamb’s lopsided stats, but he reportedly trained with Prescott a lot this offseason on their own. In 2023, Lamb went off for a historic game against the Detroit Lions’ secondary. Maybe history will be on Lamb’s side for Sunday.

Fifth Point: Mike McCarthy needs to have more help with challenges

This is just a tiny observation from the game, but one that has been troublesome for McCarthy historically. So far in 2024, the Cowboys head coach has used the challenge flag four times, and the ruling on the field was upheld all four times.

Last week against the New York Giants, it looked like the ball was beginning to move as Devin Singletary was going to the ground, but nothing obvious indicated it could be even a fifty-fifty shot. McCarthy challenged, and the call on the field stood as a non-fumble.

On the second drive of the game on Sunday, Prescott hit Jalen Brooks over the middle for what looked to be a first down. The referees marked him just shy of the line to gain in what looked to be a challenge-worthy call.

Instead, Prescott goes for a no-huddle, play-action pass from under center and throws the ball away for intentional grounding. Maybe if he challenges the spot call, there’s a favorable placement of fourth and short, and Dallas can go for a quarterback sneak and extend the drive.

On the ensuing Steelers drive, Linval Joseph has a strip sack on Justin Fields, and there’s a scrum for the fumble, with Pittsburgh coming out of the pile with the football. McCarthy challenged the ruling, even though it looked like a pretty obvious call when it happened live.

Challenges cannot be brought home with you or stored in your back pocket for next week’s game, so the sentiment that “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take” applies. However, McCarthy should change his approach to relaying things to him and what to challenge because it hasn’t worked in his favor so far this season.