The Dallas Cowboys lost on Thursday night and it is going to be a tough one to get over as they seemingly had it right within their grasp. Unfortunately for all of us, we have nothing but time to let it dissipate as we have to wait a week and a half for Dallas to play next with the season-opener taking place on a Thursday. At least we have plenty of football between now and then to help.
As we look back on what happened against the Philadelphia Eagles it is always nice to do so through the lens of both franchise and NFL history. Thanks to incredible resources like Pro Football Reference and Stathead we can run searches for specific things to help mine through the haystack.
Let’s begin.
The Eagles scored a bit despite barely moving through the air
People offer all sorts of quips about Jalen Hurts and his abilities as a passer. We are not here to discuss that today, but what we are here to do is note that the Cowboys had 24 points scored against them while Hurts “only” threw for 152 yards. That isn’t exactly common.
These are all the games this century for the Cowboys in which these thresholds were met. You can see that there are very few wins and that among them lie some of our most treasured memories (Tony Romo at Buffalo in 2007 or him again at San Francisco in 2011 when he punctured his lung).
You can give the Cowboys defense some credit for limiting things through the air, although they certainly got gashed a bit on the ground early on.
Obviously Dak Prescott could have had a better statistical night if some things had gone differently, but from a factual standpoint, it was what it was.
In a literal sense, Dak finished with over 180 passing yards (188) and a completion percentage north of 60% (61.8%). He did this without throwing a single touchdown or interception.
This was only the fifth time that Prescott threaded that particular type of statistical needle and the first in a very long time. The last instance of this weird collection of things occurring was six years ago when Dallas dropped their third game in a row in a loss to the New York Jets.
Jalen Tolbert did not exactly deliver
In a literal sense (that’s what statistics are after all) Jalen Tolbert had multiple targets. He had two, to be clear.
Tolbert reeled in exactly one of his targets on the night and did so for exactly zero yards. That makes for an interesting stat line: 2 targets, 1 reception, 0 yards.
Speaking in this matter-of-fact way, Tolbert became only the 12th player in franchise history to record multiple targets, catch at least one of them and have no yards to show for it. For what it’s worth, the list has some pretty solid names on it!
This list is mostly players who serve out of the backfield which stands to reason as they caught some sort of check down and nothing else. The most interesting one is Marion Barber III given that he had three receptions in his game, coincidentally also in Philadelphia.
CeeDee Lamb’s poor showing was rare, but not never-before-seen
Unfortunately for the Cowboys, CeeDee Lamb have some critical drops in this game. You simply cannot have that happen, ever.
PFR and Stathead do not necessarily sort by drops, but they do have a catch percentage metric that is representative of that to a degree (obviously some non-completions are not drops).
Lamb saw 13 targets on Thursday night which is what you expect your top wide receiver to command in terms of volume. As noted though, you certainly expect him to haul in more than his fair share of them and Lamb ended the night with a 53.8% catch rate.
Among games where Lamb was targeted at least 13 times, this is now tied for his fourth-worst catch rate (again, that doesn’t necessarily mean all non-completions were drops both Thursday night and for all of the games in this listing).
If we are identifying trends, so to speak, then in games where Lamb records at least 13 targets and fails to haul in at least 70% of them (for whatever reason) then the Cowboys are now 2-5 in those games. Interestingly two occurred in Philadelphia and another two were the opening kickoff games that Lamb was a part of.
Brandon Aubrey remains an elite weapon
Thursday marked the 26th game of Aubrey’s career in which he made multiple field goals for the Cowboys. Given that he has only played in 35 games that is rather impressive.
Aubrey still has a ways to go if he wants to dethrone Dan Bailey on this particular list, but if we combine kickers here for a minute we can see how much success the Cowboys offense has had in recent seasons with Brett Maher and Greg Zuerlein hanging out here.
Even Bailey proves that point to a degree.
Javonte Williams joined a short list
I’d say we were collectively stunned when Javonte Williams came out running the way that he did for the Cowboys. He proved a lot of doubters wrong. It is only Week 1 and all that jazz, but kudos.
Williams had a pair of rushing touchdowns and since it was his debut with the team I was curious who else has ever had that kind of success (multiple rushing touchdowns in their first game with the Cowboys). Upon searching I was unable to find my answer and kept running into issues so I reached out to the PFR and Stathead team and they were kind enough to figure it out on the back end, but unfortunately we don’t have a cool graphic.
Javonte Williams is now one of two players to have multiple rushing touchdowns in their Dallas Cowboys debut.
The other one was Herschel Walker.
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