The Dallas Cowboys traveled to the Superdome where they matched up against the New Orleans Saints in Week 4. The Cowboys looked to keep the winning streak alive, but they struggled having a lot of problems in multiple parts of their offense and defense in a 12-10 loss. The Saints fought hard for the victory, but had their troubles as well. I would like to discuss the areas of the Cowboys game that I felt were key to them not coming out of the Superdome with a victory.
The Running Game
Even though Ezekiel Elliott’s has had his best start to a season in his career, he has still struggled in two of the first four games. He carried the ball 18 times in this game, only gaining 35 yards in the process. Despite the low yard total for the game he still managed to punch one in for a TD. A couple things the offense could have done different to help him in this game would have been giving him more carries to the outside rather than the inside, and also giving his back up Tony Pollard more carries to lighten his load and keep the defense unbalanced. We only saw Pollard twice, and he had no effect really on either play.
The Run Defense
The Cowboys seemed to struggle against the run in this game, because not only did Kamara have a huge impact on the game, Taysom Hill also had his way with the Cowboys defense when running the ball. The Cowboys run defense has shown a decline since last year. The Cowboys defense only gave up 65 total rushing yards versus the Saints last year. They gave up almost double that amount this year with the Saints carrying for 117 total rushing yards. That’s a big difference if you ask me.
Wide Receiver Issues
It seemed as though the Wide Receivers were struggling to get open for the majority of the game. The only person I saw who was getting consistently open was Jason Witten, who had 4 receptions for 50 yards, but he had an unfortunate fumble on one of his catches. Amari Cooper also did well with 5 receptions for 48 yards, but a few times when he was able to get open he was flagged for a pushing off. Randall Cobb dropped a wide open pass on third down that forced a punt as well as a four minute drive for the Saints. Dak Prescott also threw a pass to Cobb in the back of the end zone, Cobb got a hand on it, but in the end was thrown just out of the reach of Cobbs outstretched arms.
Closing Remarks
Personally, I don’t think the game should have been put in refs hands to decide its outcome. In my opinion they made multiple bad calls down the stretch including the Ezekiel Elliott fumble call. I’m not putting full blame on the refs, because the Saints also had some bad calls, but I think the Cowboys should’ve handled the game better than they did. From my viewpoint if we want to have any chance at all against the Packers next week, these issues need to be made a priority in practice. We all know from past games that we need to play at a higher level when it comes to Aaron Rodgers, and the Packers. Lastly, hopefully we hear good news on Michael Gallup sometime this week as well as to whether he will play week 5 or not.
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