Decoding McCarthy, Wk 17 - Dak and CeeDee
McCarthy has done it again. Rodgers to Davante is here with Prescott and Lamb.
The are many similarities between the Week 16 loss in Miami and the Week 17 win vs Detroit.
Both games were decided by the slimmest of margins. Both games had a winner that felt relieved and a loser that felt like they deserved better.
Welcome to an early taste of playoff football. For the Cowboys to go 1-1 in that stretch is probably as fair an outcome as you can muster, despite the realities that 2-0 was possible and that 0-2 was, too.
This is what happens when two teams who are both capable of winning a dozen games a season go toe-to-toe.
Miami and Detroit may both be upstarts in this league, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have plenty of quality. They also have a head coach and staff that are not going to play you with extreme caution. Mike McDaniel and Dan Campbell both put together game-plans to test the Cowboys in all sorts of uncomfortable ways and they did just that. I believe that tells us a lot of good things about how the Cowboys responded. Dallas punched back over and over again and like we said, were in range of securing wins in both games.
But, 1-1 will have to do for now.
By now, you have started 2024 with the delightful news that the opposite is true in Philadelphia. They have been in free-fall mode since December began and have managed to turn 10-1 into 11-5 in five short weeks.
Philly’s Dec. 31 loss at home to Arizona is a poetic way to end a year where their fan base mentioned Dallas’ loss at Arizona in Week 3 as their principle point of comedic relief for three months. So, to lose the division title (week 18 pending) on a loss to the exact same team – but at home in front of horrified Eagles fans – was too delicious to even imagine.
When combined with the Dallas escape of Saturday Night against Detroit in which Dallas survived by the skin of their teeth, we do wonder if this year is a much different position where the Cowboys might be allowed two home games in the playoffs as well as a chance to host a NFC Championship Game if San Francisco were to falter before a proposed meeting in Santa Clara.
But, let’s not get ahead of our skis.
Dallas won on Saturday for the same reason it almost lost. Because of CeeDee Lamb and the brilliant relationship that he has forged with Dak Prescott that has allowed them both to use eachother to reach previously unvisited levels of excellence.
Lamb has improved every year of his career, but 14 months ago, when he was being analyzed for puzzling decisions down the field that were turning into interceptions, because the wide receiver seemed to be freelancing rather than helping his QB, we wondered where his path was taking him and whether Dallas bet on the wrong horse when they moved Amari Cooper out to build around Lamb.
Instead, Lamb has made them right by basically breaking all of Michael Irvin’s 1995 records. And since he did it in the 16th game, we can feel good about Lamb not requiring the bonus 17th game that Irvin never was offered.
Michael Irvin had many great years, primarily between age 25 (1991) and 29 (1995) when he was unstoppable as part of the Dallas dynasty. But, 1995 was his finest season statistically and that is why it was fun to see Lamb work by the receptions and the yardage in the same evening where Irvin and much of that dynasty team was in attendance to honor that coach, Jimmy Johnson.
Irvin has him still on first downs converted that year, but it was even something to see that Lamb has a five percent advantage on catch percentage. That was something I did not anticipate as the Aikman-to-Irvin slant felt like an automatic play in my memories.
Not only did Lamb take all of the single-season marks, but he also made a bid for the largest yardage night a Cowboy receiver has ever had in a single game. He settled for fourth highest and in doing so knocked Irvin completely out of the Top 10 of this list, too. Miles Austin’s big afternoon at Arrowhead against the Chiefs in 2009 survived by 23 yards (courtesy StatMuse).
Of all those players, only one appears on that list twice — Amari Cooper had a nice run while in Dallas, for sure.
Two things can be true.
1) CeeDee Lamb had the best receiving game we have seen in years around here with both a signature touchdown moment and countless third-down catches that tortured the Lions secondary.
And, 2) he nearly lost the game with his casual goal-line fumble.