Cowboys at Steelers (Week 10) Key Plays
The Cowboy’s continue to answer open questions, the most important one answered this week, will Tony get a chance Week 11? No.
There’s a lot to talk about after week 10’s win over the Steelers, but we’ll focus on six key plays for now and skip over Zeke’s three rushing attempts to get there.
You might be quick to blame Prescott’s awareness in the pocket for his turnover on the first drive but for a Cowboy’s offense that turns to play action often, they have to be able to depend on the blocking of their tight ends and on this early play Witten showed his age and just couldn’t get to the rusher soon enough.
The Cowboy’s got away with single coverage and this early stop for the two point conversion set the Steelers back early and they could never get that extra point back failing on four two point conversion attempts for the day. Side note, the Cowboy’s attempted a two point conversion twice, failing both times.
After missing the first four games of the season, Demarcus Lawrence seems to be getting better week after week, and his first sack of the season couldn’t have come at a better time for the Cowboys, they needed to get the Steelers off the field down 16 — 18. This sack combined with Lucky Whitehead’s 39 yard return put the Cowboys in position to take the lead.
While Prescott’s speed has led to an incredible amount of success in the boot game, what’s been lacking is the deep threat that existed under Tony Romo. on Sunday we caught another glimpse at the Dak to Dez possibilities but we’ll be on the lookout for this to become a core part of the Cowboy’s offense.
After an incredible fake spike by Roethlisberger in which the Cowboy’s Leon McFadden, promoted from the practice squad just 10 days ago, got beat by Antonio Brown, the Steelers would attempt their fourth two point conversion of the game. A successful conversion would have taken the lead to 3 points with less than a minute remaining.
Fortunately for the Cowboy’s the Steelers decided against attacking McFadden and the story of their over performing defense continues as they continue to play very physical and get away with just enough to put the team in position to win games.
And finally, the Dak to Witten connection continues to grow stronger as, coupled with a face mask penalty that saves the Cowboy’s a timeout, were able to get into field goal range late. This set up Ezekiel Elliott’s third touchdown of the day, a 32 yard rushing touchdown that wouldn’t have been possible had the last timeout been burned.
