The Lions defense was not worried about anybody beyond CeeDee Lamb when they faced the Dallas Cowboys.
Earlier this week Dallas Cowboys legend, Pro Football Hall of Famer and current Monday Night Football color analyst Troy Aikman had some choice words about CeeDee Lamb. Aikman, whose words may carry the most weight among people who have served time for America’s Team, noted that he found the route running from Cowboys wide receivers in general to be terrible. He effectively called it lazy effort.
To be clear, Aikman’s words for Lamb were a call for the wide receiver to “improve” his route running and it is hard to feel like improvement isn’t necessary from him as well as everyone on his sideline. While that is undeniably true, it is also impossible to deny that Lamb is the most potent weapon that the Cowboys have from a skill position standpoint.
This kind of statement carries a “water is wet” sort of obviousness, but the point isn’t that everyone knows that Lamb is amazing. What is troubling right now is that everyone knows this and that the Cowboys have very little to offer outside of him.
Consider the words of Detroit Lions safety Kerby Joseph who was appearing on the St. Brown Podcast this week, a show hosted by his Lions teammate Amon-Ra St. Brown. When asked what the strategy was from Detroit’s side to limit the Cowboys, Joseph said that the gameplan was to take away Lamb due to a lack of fear from anyone else.
“The gameplan was really just take (CeeDee Lamb) away, we know he’s a play maker. Once we take him out the game, we wasn’t really worried about anyone else.”
Kerby Joseph goes over the Lions’ defensive game plan in the 47-9 victory over the Cowboys ️ pic.twitter.com/uYqa8Y5bRv
— St. Brown Podcast (@StBrownPodcast) October 17, 2024
Responses to this post on X/Twitter all shared the same common denominators:
- They noted that this was not breaking news
- But that this is the case is incredibly frustrating
- That NFL teams are so openly saying this is an indictment against the Cowboys
To those overall points, it is one thing for ordinary Dallas Cowboys fans to feel like “all the Cowboys have” is CeeDee Lamb, but for an NFL safety who was a part of a group that completely dominated them to openly note it is proof that this is how other teams really do view them.
From a skill position standpoint (the players who an opposing defense would seemingly have to worry about) the Cowboys are down Brandin Cooks at the moment, but otherwise they are healthy in terms of having the group they determined was the one they wanted.
Jalen Tolbert caught the game-winning touchdown in Pittsburgh and has been a nice option, but this has not been a top season from Jake Ferguson quite yet (he missed time to be fair). It is no secret that the running game from Dallas is abysmal. How could Detroit not have the mindset that they did? What’s more is that it proved to be effective so if this overall idea wasn’t obvious to other teams then it certainly is now.
