The Dallas Cowboys got back to their winning ways Sunday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and still hold a two win lead over the New York Giants in the NFC East division, despite losing to them last week.
This really wasn’t a must win game for the Cowboys, but I really thought they needed this win in a bad way to get things back on track and quiet the doubters that reared their ugly heads after last week’s loss.
The Cowboys still hold their destiny in their hands and with this win over Tampa Bay, they can still claim home-field advantage for the playoffs if they can defeat the Detroit Lions.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the Dallas Cowboys against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. There is still areas that they can continue to improve, but overall they did enough to win the game.
So, without further ado, here is this week’s Good, Bad, And Ugly for the Dallas Cowboys Sunday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Good
I’m going to state the obvious here and say that Dak Prescott’s performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday night was the good. Yes, I could’ve gone a number of different directions, but #4 absolutely had to show up this game or risk losing his starting job.
Against the Giants last week Prescott had one of his worst performances in his young career and finished the game with only a 45.4 passer rating.Fortunately, he rebounded in a big way against the Buccaneers Sunday night and finished with an impressive 88.9 completion percentage.
The Buccaneers were one of the hottest teams in the NFL and the way their defense was performing was largely responsible for that.
Fortunately though, Prescott completed 32 of 36 of his passes for 279 passing yards against them, with no interceptions, and rushed for one TD. He did have a passing TD, but that was unfortunately overturned because of a penalty.
Prescott needed to rebound after a couple of poor performances in order to quite his doubters. He did just that Sunday night and it looks as if he has the Dallas Cowboys offense firing on all cylinders once again.
The Bad
Penalties! This is unfortunately becoming a weekly occurrence and is without a doubt the bad for the Dallas Cowboys against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday night.
It seems every time the Dallas Cowboys put together a good offensive drive, they hurt themselves with an untimely penalty that puts them in a long down distance situation. These drive killers can’t continue to happen if they want to compete against some of the best teams in the NFL in the postseason.
The Cowboys have to become more disciplined in this area and they need to do it fast. It is completely unacceptable that they keep hurting themselves with these self-inflicted penalties.
The penalty that could have cost themselves the game against the Buccaneers was the holding penalty against Tyron Smith that wiped out the Lance Dunbar TD. The Cowboys had to settle for a Dan Bailey field goal, giving the Buccaneers a chance to steal the game in the end.
If I’m Jason Garrett, I’m going to stress the importance of not allowing these mental mistakes to happen in meetings and on the practice field this week. Let’s just hope everyone receives this message loud and clear.
The Ugly
The ugly this week for the Cowboys against the Buccaneers was probably the defensive performance. Of course, this could probably go in the good category as well.
The sad truth is, the defense for the Dallas Cowboys is never going to completely dominate a game, but they continue to make plays when it matters and they did just that against the Buccaneers Sunday night.
The defense held the Buccaneers to just 20 points and had four quarterback sacks, three interceptions, and one fumble recovery. That’s a pretty good outing for any defense in the NFL, especially for the Dallas Cowboys who only have one Pro Bowl player on that side of the ball.
The reason I have the defense in the ugly category is because the Buccaneers still had a chance to win at the end of the game, and I just kept feeling like there was a big possibility their offense was going to come up with a big play that would ultimately cost the Cowboys the victory.
Fortunately though, they were able to get the Buccaneers offense off the field the last couple drives and that was in large part to David Irving’s domination. Hopefully #95 can continue that dominance into the postseason.
What is your good, bad, and ugly for the Cowboys against the Buccaneers?
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