CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons are in some pretty rare historical places after Sunday.
The Dallas Cowboys took care of business on Sunday against the Carolina Panthers and in the process improved to 6-8 on the season. There have been accolades for Rico Dowdle who put forth another impressive game running the ball for America’s Team. Big-time things like Dowdle excelling get touched on by the broadcast, but there are often details about what the Cowboys are accomplishing that take a little bit more digging to uncover.
This is where the wonderful tools from Stathead and Pro Football Reference come into play. They allow us to sift and sort through both franchise and league history to see and measure what the Cowboys are doing against all of time.
Here are this week’s findings.
What Rico Dowdle is doing currently is very special
Rico Dowdle had quite the day against Carolina. It was the third game in a row in which he set a career high from a rushing yardage standpoint. That alone is an absurd statement.
What was particularly impressive about Dowdle’s work though was that he averaged six yards per carry while carrying the ball for over 145 yards. He is just the 10th player in franchise history to do this in the 21st century, and the first since Ezekiel Elliott on the night where Zeke hurdled at Philadelphia back in 2018.
We are past the point of Dowdle having normal or nice numbers from a running back. This is elite production.
This 4-game stretch specifically has been incredible from Dowdle
While Dowdle has had over 100 yards in each of his last three games, it was the one before the run started where things started to really click for him. We are talking about the win at Washington. Since then Dowdle has had 84 carries for 478 yards. Surprisingly, he only has a single touchdown to show for all of that work.
As far as the yardage is concerned though, Dowdle is the first Cowboys running back to have 475+ rushing yards in a four-game span since Zeke did it in 2017. Again, we are seeing some incredible production from him ever since the Cowboys began to feed him more.
The last defensive coordinator to oversee that kind of domination, amazingly, was Mike Zimmer
On the other side of the ball, Mike Zimmer’s group was absolutely dominant against the Panthers. Across the day as a whole the Cowboys defense had four takeaways and recorded six sacks.
No NFL defense had reached both of those marks in a single game all season prior to Dallas doing it. The Cowboys actually did it on almost the one-year anniversary of the latest occurrence which was the Miami Dolphins a year ago.
Amazingly, the last instance of Dallas reaching these defensive thresholds in a game came over 20 years ago back during the 2004 season. This means that Mike Zimmer’s group did it for the first time since another Mike Zimmer group did it.
Mike Zimmer is mirroring his first stint with the Cowboys in an impressive way
In registering at least one takeaway the Cowboys stretched their streak of doing so to seven consecutive games. They never reached this mark in a single season under Dan Quinn, for what it’s worth. That is not a slight against Quinn by any means, just a note in how difficult it is to do.
2024 is the 25th season since the turn of the century and the Cowboys have had a streak of seven games with a turnover on 13 different occasions now. To the point of Zimmer finding his own fountain of youth within the Cowboys, the first five instances of it happening this century were all under his watch!
Micah Parsons had another game with multiple sacks
On Sunday, Micah Parsons got to Bryce Young on two different occasions which made it a multi-sack day for him. Those have become quite common for Parsons throughout his career to this point.
It was actually the 14th game in which Parsons has had at least two sacks which is tied for the fourth-most through the first four years of a player’s career in NFL history. With three games left to go it is possible for Parsons to tie or even pass J.J. Watt’s production through his first four seasons.
Micah Parsons is on the verge of some impressive history thanks to those two sacks
On the subject of Parsons, his two sacks gave him 8.5 on the season which means he has 1.5 to go in order to reach double digits. Should he get there then he will have had double-digit sacks in each of his first four NFL seasons, truly impressive and unbelievable stuff.
Only four players in NFL history have had double-digit sacks in each of their first four seasons as you can see. They are all in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
CeeDee Lamb is continuing his impressive form in his fifth NFL season
Back to the offense for a final moment, CeeDee Lamb had an impressive outing to say the least. He completely dominated the first half and was a big reason for all of the success at that point.
Ultimately Lamb crossed the 100-yard mark in the game and did so for the 22nd time in his career (counting the postseason). He is now one of 19 players in NFL history to have 22 games with 100 yards receiving through his first five NFL seasons.
If it is not obvious, Lamb has the most 100-yard games through the first five seasons of a player’s career with the Dallas Cowboys specifically.
