The Cowboys defense was dominating the Cardinals through the first 3 quarters on Sunday. Then Gardner Minshew replaced Jacoby Brissett at quarterback.
Prior to Minshew entering the game, Dallas had allowed just 3 points, sacked Brissett 4 times, picked him off once, and allowed just 47 rushing yards on 18 carries.
With Minshew under center, however, the Cardinals would rush for 155 yards on 9 attempts. That included runs of 63 and 52 yards on their first two carries.
Minshew also completed 17 of 23 passes for 188 yards and 3 touchdowns. He basically did whatever he wanted.
But even with the defensive collapse, the Cowboys still should have won this game. They led 30-24 with 1:09 remaining. The Cardinals had the ball with no timeouts and 80 yards to go. This should have been a nearly impossible hill for Arizona to climb. It certainly shouldn’t have been as easy as it was for the Cardinals to score.
As has been the case all season for Dallas, though, poor play-calling, situational football, and execution did them in.
A few completions got the Cardinals into Cowboys territory (including one ridiculous throw by Minshew with some of the best anticipation you’ll ever see). Arizona had the ball at the Cowboys’ 40-yard line with 27 seconds remaining. Again, they had no timeouts.
There are two things you don’t want to do as a defense in this situation. First, you can’t allow the offense to get out of bounds and stop the clock. Second, and more importantly, you can’t let them get a big-chunk play. You can’t allow them to get within striking distance of the end zone and run a normal red-zone play to try and score the game-winning touchdown.
You have to keep them in a hail-mary situation.
That’s why it was so puzzling to see defensive coordinator Christian Parker call a blitz and play cover-1 (man) behind it with multiple defenders in press position:
Dallas isn’t exactly a team that has the DB’s who can just line up and and say, “Our best vs. your best, bring it on!” Not to mention, Joey Porter Jr. wasn’t even in the game at that point.
So it wasn’t a surprise to see Arizona come up with a 27-yard completion here:
Again, the Cardinals had no timeouts. You have to keep everything in front of you as a defense in that situation. Dallas chose not to on this play, and it cost them.
And now that Arizona was at the 13-yard line, they could run a normal red-zone play. They went with an empty formation with 3 receivers to the left:
Then they motioned to a trips-bunch. Notice the two Cowboys defenders, cornerback Cobie Durant (to the left) and safety Alijah Clark (to the right) communicating right before the snap:
It looked like the Cowboys were trying to box the trips-bunch look with 4 defenders over Arizona’s 3 receivers, a common tactic against this formation: