RODGERS RALLIES PACK
Cowboys squander big lead for 2nd week in row
When Dak Prescott dashed into the end zone on a quarterback keeper in the closing moments at AT&T Stadium, it turned out to be too much, too soon.
Aaron Rodgers was left with 73 seconds on the clock.
Uh-oh.
Sure enough, Rodgers rallied the Green Bay Packers to a game-winning touchdown — a 12-yard toss to Davante Adams with 11 seconds left — that cemented a result that painted the Dallas Cowboys as a team that can’t
master the art of winning.
The Cowboys blew a 15-point lead on the way to the 35-31 loss to Rodgers’ Packers on Sunday, a week after squandering a 24-13 advantage in losing to the Los Angeles Rams.
Two weeks, two double-figure leads wasted. Not the mark of a winner. Not here. Not now.
Dallas (2-3), which headed into this campaign as the NFC East favorite and a Super Bowl contender, has already lost as many games as it did during the entire regular season in 2016. And one of those losses, by 25 points to the Denver Broncos, was the franchise’s worst in five years.
It’s the reality of a different season — although the sight of Rodgers carving up the Dallas defense Sunday looked a lot like the way last season ended for the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs.
Hindsight can be tricky. But as it stands now, Prescott might have been better off sliding or, hey, taking a knee at the 1-yard line to take more time off the clock and leave less time for Rodgers.
“In theory, you could do that, yes,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said.
Such an unconventional ploy would assume the Cowboys could punch it in, which is another type of risk.
Yet this is getting drastic. After the game, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones reiterated his position against players kneeling during national anthem protests. But imagine if Prescott had taken a knee to protest the possibility of Rodgers abusing Dallas’ often-maligned defense. Prescott, who threw an interception that Damarious Randall returned 21 yards for a score in the fourth quarter, has already thrown as many picks this season (four) as he did all of last year.
But when in position to retake the lead he’d given away with that turnover, he would not have wanted to take a knee — at least not at the 1-yard line — to run down the clock.
“You’re playing with fire doing that,” Prescott said. “It’s a slippery slope. For us, it’s important to get in the end zone and put the pressure on them.”
Well, actually, the pressure was on the Cowboys defense — which harassed Rodgers early and sacked him four times — with the game on the line against arguably the NFL’s most dangerous quarterback.
“I’m going to trust my defense,” Prescott said. “This is a team game.”
That’s so admirable of Prescott, a team leader to the hilt. But while he trusted a unit playing without its heartbeat, Pro Bowl linebacker Sean Lee, and thin in the secondary, leaving rookie cornerback Jourdan Lewis to get picked on, you can believe so many of the Cowboys faithful were crossing their fingers or praying for a miracle against Rodgers.
Jones admitted his worry. Es- pecially after the previous week, when the Rams, quarterbacked by Jared Goff and juiced by Todd Gurley, outscored the Cowboys 19-6 in the second half.
This time, the Packers scored 16 unanswered points to put the onus on Dallas.
“Thought we competed better today than we did last week,” Jones compared. “I thought we were a better team out there in the second half than we were last week. The circumstances were the same, and we end up losing the game. But Rodgers was expected in the second half. Goff was not.”
Rodgers was expected. As great as he is, that’s not exactly an endorsement of what Dallas is rolling with on defense while aiming to field a championship team again.
“Frankly, I was a little more frustrated after last week than this week,” Jones said. “I’m not surprised that Rodgers took that ball all the way down there and beat us.”
No, the big surprise now would be if Dallas can protect a big lead.