Dak Prescott nearly gets the nod at safety in the 2023 Dallas Cowboys game against the Detroit Lions. Lions defenders swarmed the Cowboys quarterback and made contact with him in the end zone.
On third-and-13, with 3:40 left in the first quarter, the Lions piled on the pressure.
advertise
But Prescott eluded the would-be sacker, crawled to his right side and threw the ball 41 yards downfield to CeeDee Lamb, who had the Lions defenders sprawling as he ran the remaining 51 yards to the end zone.
A 92-yard touchdown ultimately helped the Cowboys win 20-19.
That could point to a solution if Dallas wants to beat the Lions, who are three-point home favorites on Thursday night.
In their prime, Lions football was deceptive on offense and aggressive on defense en route to a 15-2 regular season record last year. This year’s operations, however, exposed more vulnerabilities. Dallas’ offense has shown it can keep pace with other, better teams. So, as its defense continues to establish an identity built on stopping the run and controlling the line of scrimmage, can the Cowboys catch up to the Lions in a way that the Lions failed to do last fall, when the Lions arrived at AT&T Stadium and scored 47 points to the Cowboys’ only nine points?
advertise
“I can’t get over the 40 points they gave us,” team owner and general manager Jerry Jones said Tuesday on Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan. “The hook and lateral play they did on a passing game? It was really embarrassing. So I can’t forget that.
“I give them all the respect they’ve earned over the past few years.”
While the Lions earned plenty of respect, they also exposed weaknesses that the team sought to exploit. One of them, the Green Bay Packers’ Thanksgiving win: The Lions’ vulnerability on explosive plays.
Detroit ranks 14thth Total defense power and 15th Teams that can overcome pressure and tight defense will gain a lot when allowed to score. According to TruMedia Sports, the Lions allowed 41 passes of 20 yards or more, ranking fifth in the NFL. The Packers saw that as they burned the Lions defense on five plays of 20 or more yards, including Jordan Love’s 51 touchdown run to Christian Watson and Dontayvion Wicks’ 22 touchdown run.
advertise
With Prescott’s receiving corps anchored by Lamb and offseason rookie George Pickens, can he follow suit?
Cowboys ranked 11thth There have been 37 completions of 20 yards or more this season; they rank sixth with 165 carries of 10 yards or more.
[Get more Cowboys news: Dallas team feed]
Maybe the Cowboys’ 92 yards in 2023 aren’t an anomaly. Maybe that’s the road map to a win over a Lions team that can put up a score.
“The Lions did something unique,” Lamb said of their physicality. “They line up, they don’t care who you are. They line up and get ready to play like crazy.
advertise
“It’s going to be a physical, long, hard game. Essentially, it’s a playoff game.”
Can the Lion suppress the Lamb and Pickens at the same time?
Several factors, including the Cowboys defense, make a difference in Dallas’ ability to run the Lions in 2023 compared to 2024.
The Prescott-Lamb relationship ranks high.
In the 2023 win, Prescott completed 68.4% of his passes for 345 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. Lamb had 13 catches on 17 targets for 227 yards and a touchdown.
Last year, the completion rate dropped to 51.5% for 178 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions. Lamb caught just seven of Prescott’s 14 targets for 89 yards and no scores.
advertise
The Cowboys know the physicality of the Lions defense is coming. The question is whether they can cope.
“Knowing a team that comes in here, or we have to go play, that’s the main thing about who they are – we understand more than ever how important physicality is,” Prescott told reporters this week. “They’re a special team at DB. They’re going to make calls to the refs. [their physicality] And we as receivers, we have to be equally physical and let the referee call the penalty and make sure he sees it’s DPI. A lot of times, you have to be more physical than those guys to get the call, otherwise, right, they’re just going to say, ‘Yeah, he locked him up. ‘
“So it’s important for us to be at the top of the line, off the line and understand that we have to beat the media and people.”
The Cowboys faced a similar style in Week 5 against the Jets and Detroit’s last defensive coordinator, Aaron Glenn. Dallas won 37-22, with Prescott passing for 237 yards and four touchdowns.
advertise
The defensive philosophy wasn’t the same on Thanksgiving against the Kansas City Chiefs, but the team once again looked to frontcourt pressure and physicality in the secondary to slow down Pickens-Lamb’s one-two punch.
Prescott was intercepted early and then rebounded for 320 yards and two touchdowns. Lamb and Pickens combined for 200 yards as the Cowboys defeated the Chiefs 31-28. Officials came down hard on the offensive secondary, flagging the Chiefs for defensive pass interference four times.
Pickens excelled in outside coverage, totaling a league-high 432 yards and two scores, according to Next Gen Stats. Only the Seattle Seahawks’ Jaxon Smith-Njigba averaged more yards per route than Pickens’ 3.2 when facing off-the-field media coverage; meanwhile, the Lions pressured receivers on routes the second-highest rate at 37.3 percent and the third-highest rate at 38.6 percent compared to outside receivers.
Pickens will challenge their discipline. Lamb, who plays opposite Pickens in 80 percent of his games, creates his own mismatch issues.
advertise
“These two guys are top players in the league, top players in the top echelon,” Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Shepard told reporters. “They both run the entire route tree. The only real difference I would say is the physicality that George Pickens brings to the field: huge catch radius, very physical on offense, opening himself up. And CeeDee, he’ll sink into their hips, he’ll get in and out of them, and if your leverage isn’t right, if you don’t understand what you’re doing, he’ll put you in a blender.
“They do a really good job of splitting them up, I mean on opposite sides, which means you have to cover the whole field.”
Cowboys, Lions have no room for error in primetime game
The Lions have been slightly better than the Cowboys all season. Detroit is currently 7-5 and ranked eighth in the NFC standings, ahead of the 6-5-1 Cowboys, who are ranked ninth.
advertise
But the teams diverge in direction.
While the Lions have won four of their first five games and five of their first seven, they haven’t won back-to-back games since Sept. 28 and Oct. 5. The Cowboys got off to a slow start this year, thanks to a defensive liability that appears to have been resolved after acquiring star defensive tackle Quinnen Williams at the trade deadline and returning multiple injured starters.
The Cowboys are hotter than they have been all season: After failing to win back-to-back games until late November, they have won three in a row, including upsets of the defending champion Eagles and Chiefs last week.
“I don’t think it’s really getting better, especially with everyone in the world understanding that we all want to make the playoffs,” Lamb said. “It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a good thing.”
A win for the Cowboys would put them ahead of the Lions in the NFC playoffs and just a half-game behind the NFC East-leading Eagles. According to The Athletic’s playoff simulator, Dallas’ playoff chances will jump from 23% to 41%. A loss would drop Dallas’ playoff chances to 9%.
advertise
The Lions’ victory wouldn’t immediately affect Detroit’s standing in the NFC North, where they sit 9-3 against the Chicago Bears and 8-3-1 against the Green Bay Packers. But according to The Athletic’s simulator, Detroit’s wild-card chances will increase, increasing their chance of making the playoffs from 30% to 45%. If they fail, their chances are reduced to 12%.
Sheppard didn’t blink during the uphill climb to a playoff berth. The Lions are “exactly where we want to be,” he said.
“We started the year with goals and aspirations,” Sheppard said. “All of these goals and aspirations are still in front of us, but now we have a little more urgency – and that’s how it should be. But sometimes we all, and this is human nature, you need a little push.
“I just hope this is a wake-up call for all of us. Things are urgent and the margin for error is intolerable.”
advertise
The Cowboys will arrive in Detroit with that same sense of urgency. They’ll look to use an explosive performance and a quarterback who’s good against the blitz to get another win to keep their chances alive.
They knew they were letting their elimination come too close for comfort. But their journey is not over yet.
“We didn’t hit the ball well in the beginning and now we’re starting to pick up the pace,” Prescott said. “We’re starting to figure out who we are not just offensively but defensively and as a team. Yeah, it’s been fun. I can tell you that. [I’ve] With other teams, you start off great and this time of year you’re trying to figure out what you have to do to get back on track and have the momentum that we’re doing now.
advertise
“[Having] Not only that, but the right guys in the locker room understand our situation and understand that this is the most important time of the year and show that and they’re fun to prepare for every day and throughout the week. “