PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – OCTOBER 16: Micah Parsons #11 of the Dallas Cowboys gets in the face of Dallas Goedert #88 of the Philadelphia Eagles after a play in the third quarter during the game at Lincoln Financial Field on October 16, 2022 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
There’s really no such thing as a “good loss.” While the Dallas Cowboys did attempt to stage a comeback after going down 20-3 at half to the Philadelphia Eagles, they really just ended up beating themselves thanks to the return of disciplinary penalties.
At the end of the 2021 season and for the bulk of the preseason, penalties were the biggest issue with this team. Head coach Mike McCarthy continually emphasized that cleaning up play was a major focus, yet penalties kept coming. Week 1 saw many frustrating flags as well, but the team really did seem to clean things up in Weeks 2-5.
However, Sunday night against the Eagles, the Cowboys were seeing yellow laundry far too much. The most unnerving part was that most of the penalties were discipline mistakes rather than hiccups or worthwhile flags that saved plays.
Some examples include Osa Odighizuwa getting called for unnecessary roughness in the closing moments of the game. Cornerback Trevon Diggs drew an unsportsmanlike conduct flag when he threw his helmet to the ground while screaming in the end zone after a 4th quarter Philadelphia touchdown. Dante Fowler Jr. had perhaps the worst one with a neutral zone infraction when everyone in the world knew the Eagles were not actually going to go for a 4th and four attempt in field goal range, which led to Philly’s first touchdown. Special teams ace Kelvin Joseph was flagged multiple times, one for roughness on a kick return.
Does this matter? It actually does. So far this year, the Cowboys have won every single game they have less than ten penalties in. In Week 1 they had 10. In Week 2 they had five. week three they had eight. In Week 4 they had four. In Week 5 they had five. In Week 6 they had 10 again.
Fans on the couch throwing their arms up in frustration weren’t the only ones to notice how the Cowboys were hurting themselves in this game. After the contest, Eagles DE Brandon Graham even told reporters that “there were a lot of penalties that cost [Dallas]” in big moments. Not ideal when an opponent can easily point out your lack of discipline.
Eagles DE Brandon Graham: "I feel like the Cowboys lost their head a little bit on that unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and it cost them. There were a lot of penalties that cost them in this game especially in big moments, but we’ll take it."
— Jori Epstein (@JoriEpstein) October 17, 2022
This was obviously a frustrating night for the Dallas defense. After not allowing more than 19 points to any opponent through the first five weeks, the squad gave up 20 unanswered in the second quarter. However, that’s no excuse for losing your cool.
Cowboys defensive star Micah Parsons could recognize that.
He had a rough penalty of his own. In the third quarter, the Swiss Army knife dropped into coverage and did an incredible job tracking Eagles TE Dallas Goedert as a defensive back. Parsons almost had an interception on the play. Instead of being excited to force Philly to punt and celebrating with his teammates, Parsons chose to blatantly taunt Goedert and drew a 15-yard penalty.
What should’ve been a punt turned into an automatic first down.
This is what Parsons said about the situation after the game:
“It’s just passion of the game. You play the game with passion, you play it with heart, and sometimes you might overdo it. Football’s a game of a talk trash and hitting people. And I thought it (the flag) was a little bit late, but I’ve got to be accountable for that and not give up the first down for my team.
It’s just more frustrating because I really feel like we beat ourselves, and you play back on the mistakes that I made and some other guys might have made and just know we could play a much cleaner football game. That’s the frustrating part.”
The Cowboys defense still had great moments in the matchup. They sacked Hurts four separate times and helped the offense stage an almost comeback in the second half. Parsons said all Dan Quinn’s unit can do is learn from the mistakes. McCarthy, on the other hand, is still trying to get his team to learn from flag issues:
“The biggest thing we’ve got to be better at: we’ve got to eliminate these discipline penalties. We had way too many discipline penalties, especially in the fourth quarter. That’s where my focus is.”
If only we could get a dollar for every time we heard that.
At the end of the day, Parsons knows this team will grow and learn from this situation. It wasn’t pretty, but there were a lot of positives to take. The 23-year-old even said he’s excited for round two on Christmas Eve:
“Really looking forward to it. We’re going to get better from this. The things that we did, our mistakes, we’re going to learn from them, and we’ve got a long way to go but you don’t win championships in six games. We’ve got a long road.”
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