Defense fails when team needs a stop
Eagles won coin toss in OT then marched down field and scored.
— One stop. That’s all the Dallas Cowboys have asked of their defense in the past two weeks.
Make one stop with the game on the line, end the longest losing streak of the Jason Garrett era and rekindle the team’s playoff hopes in a dreadful NFC East.
Two games ago, the Seattle Seahawks drove 79 yards in 17 plays in the closing min- utes for the winning field goal in a 13-12 triumph. This time, the Philadelphia Eagles drove 80 yards in nine plays, capped by a 41-yard touchdown pass in overtime, for a 33-27 victory.
The Cowboys’ playoff hopes are officially on life support with a six-game losing streak, a 2-6 record and one more game without quarterback Tony Romo on Sun-
day at Tampa Bay.
The team’s playoff chances looked good coming out of the Seattle game. The defense showed enough in holding the defending NFC champion to a single offensive touchdown. Three lesser opponents awaited: Philadelphia, Tampa Bay and Miami, all with losing records.
But with the New York Giants winning Sunday to move to 5-4, it will probably take a 9-7 record to win the East. That means Dallas must now go 7-1 the rest of the way. That’s a tall order, even for Romo, with games remaining against Carolina, Green Bay and the Jets plus a post-Christmas trip to Buffalo. And that’s assuming the Cowboys can get past Tampa Bay on the road.
The offense has struggled without Romo, churning through two quarterbacks and two running backs in search of yardage and points. But the offense finally found itself Sunday night against the Eagles. It was balanced and potent and deserved to win. Matt Cassel passed for 299 yards, Darren McFadden rushed for 117, and Cole Beasley and Dez Bryant had 100-yard receiving games as the Cowboys controlled the ball for more than 38 minutes.
But defense was the difference. The Eagles came up with the one stop they needed. The Cowboys didn’t. Ballgame.
Philadelphia’s one stop came early in the fourth quarter. Former Texas Longhorns linebacker Jordan Hicks, whose blitz in the second week of the season broke Romo’s collarbone, intercepted a pass early in the fourth quarter and raced 67 yards down the home sideline for a touchdown, giving the Eagles a 21-14 lead.
Philadelphia has come to expect plays like that from its defense, which entered the game with an NFL-high 19 takeaways. The Cowboys entered the game with a league-low four takeaways, and the count remained at four by game’s end Sunday.
The Eagles also sacked Cassel four times, fueling three more defensive stops. The Cowboys managed to sack Sam Bradford once. The embattled Greg Hardy delivered that one late in the third quarter for an 8-yard loss, but he more than gave the one good play back with two bad ones — penalties for a personal foul and offside totaling 20 yards.
Dan Bailey’s 41-yard field goal capped a 54-yard drive engineered by Cassel in the final two minutes of regulation to force the overtime. But Philadelphia won the coin toss, took the ball and rammed it down the throat of the Dallas defense.
The Cowboys never saw the ball in overtime. They needed a stop, and the defense couldn’t provide it. The losses mounted, and the playoff hopes are fading.