Cowboys home-cooking win streak and season ends at hands of Packers in Wild Card
The Dallas Cowboys of 2023 will not be the first team to visit the NFC Championship Game since 1996. They are the second team in the NFC East and the third consecutive team to win 12 games during the regular season under Mike McCarthy.
Instead, the squad that has recently given supporters hope might be the most depressing in a while since that hope evaporated against the Packers at the first kickoff on Sunday.
The Cowboys, who were playing at home to start the playoffs, reversed a 27-7 halftime hole into a more respectable 48-32 loss, but it was still not near the result they had anticipated. This was their third straight playoff-game loss against McCarthy’s previous team.
The Cowboys’ 16-game winning streak at AT&T Stadium was humiliatingly ended as they became the first team in history to lose to a seven-seed.
The Cowboys looked unprepared for the situation, even though their coaching has been a strength all season. They especially deviated greatly from the playing approach that put them in this position at home.
With Aaron Jones scoring three touchdowns on the ground and the Packers dominating through the air versus zone coverage, man coverage, and blitz looks, the Packers were the more aggressive team in this game.
Dak Prescott was forced to throw the ball from behind for the Cowboys offense, which is not an unusual situation for him to be in during a playoff game, but his 60 attempts were still a new career record. It will be reduced to nothing more than his fifth playoff defeat in seven tries and third of the Mike McCarthy era once the background of this game is removed.
The Cowboys have been trying unsuccessfully to make a deeper playoff run, so they have spent the offseason ignoring the constant chatter and noise about coaches’ job security and personnel changes.
However, since this offseason arrived so quickly and before anyone in Dallas anticipated it, almost anything is up for discussion right now when it comes to America’s team’s future.
With size on the defensive interior and four down lineman formations, the Cowboys defense showed respect for Aaron Jones and the Packers’ run game during their two opportunities to get off the field on the game’s first drive.
A sack that would have put Green Bay in a third and long was erased by an improper contact penalty on DaRon Bland, but on the following play, DeMarcus Lawrence attempted to give Dallas life with a run stop.
The Cowboys’ game fell apart at this point, despite Lawrence and the defensive line doing their part to prevent blockers from reaching the second and third levels.
The matchup of Jones and Damone Clark in the hole turned into the game’s mismatch; Jones’ toughness caught Clark off guard, and at the end of a 12-play touchdown drive that gave the Packers a 7-0 lead and set the tone for the remainder of the game, Jones was shoved into the end zone.
In addition to having home field advantage, the Cowboys were strong favorites in this game since it appeared like they had many more opportunities to win than the Packers did to pull off the upset.
The most likely scenario for Green Bay was for Jones to have what they had on the ground—his second game in which he scored at least three touchdowns and his fourth in which he went over 100 yards.
Though Jones’ third touchdown came right after a scoring drive that cut the deficit to 17, the Packers’ pass-game balance and Jordan Love’s penchant for throwing off-platform when under duress ensured that Dan Quinn’s defense would suffer a historic collapse.
Since McCarthy’s first season as defensive coordinator under Mike Nolan, who did not make it through the season, the 48 points Dallas has given up at home are the highest since that time.
It breaks a previous best set earlier this season against the NFC’s top-seeded 49ers in their 42-10 road loss. It was the most for the Cowboys in the Quinn era.
The narrative has swiftly gone from Quinn being a major loss for the Cowboys heading into yet another offseason when he is a candidate for head coach positions throughout the league, maybe most notably with his old team in Seattle. With this setback, his distinctive defensive approach and requirement that the game unfold in a particular way in order to succeed may have reached their limit.
There was still hope that this game could be a vintage Prescott and CeeDee Lamb home performance when the Cowboys lit up the scoreboard and put pressure on a quarterback making his first career playoff start. However, the Packers had already taken a 7-0 lead before the Cowboys offense touched the ball.
A miscommunication between Prescott and Lamb on the opening drive resulted in a punt, and Sam Williams’ fair catch interference penalty gave the Packers superior starting field position; thus, this opportunity quickly evaporated. Williams has received eight penalties this season, five of which have come from special teams.
Dallas started the first five drives of the game in their 15-yard line or worse, but the Cowboys defense rallied to force the only punt they would earn until the fourth quarter of this lopsided defeat, pinning their offense back inside their own ten-yard line.
If the Cowboys’ offense had been clicking, they could have been able to turn the game around by sustaining lengthy drives, but after Prescott intercepted Brandin Cooks to set up another quick score by Jones to put the Packers ahead 14-0, things took a completely different turn.
The Packers looked much more like the Cowboys team that fans were used to seeing at home this season after this early advantage, which grew to 27-0 before the Cowboys required every second of the last 1:50 of the first half to score on the final play.
The Cowboys reverted to habits that they usually reserved for road trips; they played tight offense and focused more on who would get the ball when plays were called than they did on exploiting matchups outside.
The Packers took shots downfield, even with a large lead. Love had averaged 7.2 yards per attempt going into the game, but he hit 13 against a Cowboys secondary that saw players like Jourdan Lewis and Jayron Kearse get picked off in coverage.
Despite playing through an injury in this game, Christian Watson was not nearly as effective as he was the last time he faced the Cowboys, as he only saw 23 snaps in the afternoon.
Even Quinn understood where the ball would be heading for the Packers without him as a danger, but Love was still flawless at 11 for 11 when he targeted Romeo Doubs, Luke Musgrave, and Dontayvion Wicks, scoring a touchdown to each of them. Wicks’ goal in the second quarter put the score at 20 against Love, despite a six-man rush putting enough pressure on Love to keep him from going down.
