There’s a great quote about baseball in the movie Bull Durham: “This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.”
Sometimes football is just as simple.
The Eagles’ opening night win over the Cowboys happened for a few straight-forward and easy-to-pinpoint reasons; The Cowboys couldn’t catch the ball, and they had no plan to account for Jalen Hurts’ legs. Both burned them in the most critical moments.
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We can start with the Cowboys Offense and Dak Prescott. I thought he played an outstanding game overall. The Eagles really didn’t stop Dallas as much as the Cowboys stopped themselves.
CeeDee Lamb uncharacteristically dropped two key passes in the 4th quarter. One came on a 3rd-and-10. The other would have been a big play to put Dallas in striking distance of a go-ahead touchdown on their final drive:
It wasn’t just Lamb though. Tight end Jake Ferguson dropped this perfectly-placed pass that would have given the Cowboys a 27-24 lead in the 3rd quarter:
Yes, he was rocked for a personal foul penalty, so it’s tough to entirely criticize him for not coming down with the catch. But that ball was coming out before he got hit. It didn’t help matters that on the very next play, Miles Sanders fumbled the ball away and the Cowboys ended up with no points.
Prescott threw the ball extremely well on Thursday night. On those 3 game-changing drops, I don’t think he could have put the ball in a better spot if he had run down the field and placed it in his receivers’ hands.
For most of the night, the Eagles couldn’t get any pressure, and that allowed the Cowboys to take advantage of the mismatch between their receivers and Philly’s secondary.
It gave them time to set up their routes, like Lamb did here: