Cowboys sent fearsome reminder to rest of the NFL with win over Chargers
The Play Caller Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Chargers failed to provide a clear-cut winner. Both Mike McCarthy and Kellen Moore entered the game with something to prove and neither really cooked, as the kids say. But anyone watching Monday Night Football in Week 6 saw one quarterback outperform the other. And let […]
The Play Caller Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Chargers failed to provide a clear-cut winner. Both Mike McCarthy and Kellen Moore entered the game with something to prove and neither really cooked, as the kids say.
But anyone watching Monday Night Football in Week 6 saw one quarterback outperform the other. And let me tell you, it wasn't Justin Herbert on the winning side of that debate. Is he a better quarterback overall? Probably so. But Prescott outplayed him on Monday as he willed his team to a primetime win.
However, it's difficult to understate just how important the Cowboys' defense was in slowing down the Chargers quarterback. Many have pointed out that Herberthad some clear misses during the game, and he did. But don't let that distract you from the fact that the pass rush forced many of them.
The boxscore might hide that very well given that the Cowboys finished the night with just one sack, courtesy of Micah Parsons in the Chargers' final drive of the game. But the advanced stats don't lie:
No one had pressured Herbert as much this season as much as the Cowboys did. Parsons' name might not have been called a whole lot on the broadcast but the Chargers clearly dedicated a lot of resources to slowing him down. To a degree, it worked. But pressuring Herbert led to many incomplete passes.
Per PFF, the Chargers quarterback completed only 8-of-18 passes under pressure, good for a mediocre 44.4% completion rate.
And make no mistake about it, the Cowboys didn't beat up a bad offensive line. In fact, the Chargers were top 10 in pressure rate allowed in the NFL entering Week 6.
This is all to say one thing: The Cowboys' defense is still legit. It's impossible to erase whatever happened in San Francisco from the record books and we shouldn't. At the end of the day, the team is planning on meeting the 49ers again in January.
But this unit should still be feared, something the NFL world seemed to forget when setting the projected game total at 50.5 points.
Cowboys: Why did the Chargers get the ball back on odd Jalen Tolbert play?
Tough, tough break.
