Dallas Cowboys: 3 positive takeaways from the loss in Philadelphia

Dallas Cowboys takeaway No. 2: Eagles are venerable

The Dallas Cowboys have to feel especially good since this was NOT the outcome many thought it would be. The Eagles only won by nine against a back-up QB who threw three interceptions and they repeatedly had tremendous field position because of it. They should have destroyed this Dallas team.

We saw the Dallas Cowboys come within three points late in the second half — even with the turnovers, penalties, terrible field position, etc…, CeeDee Lamb was still running wide open on Rush’s final INT (that basically sealed the game) and the Cowboys were in it from start to finish.

The Eagles are happy to point and laugh at the Dallas D that gave up more than one touchdown for the first time this season and subsequently gave a season-high 26 points. But they ignore much of it was a biproduct of the Cowboys offensive ineptitude.

With three possessions inside Cowboys territory in the second quarter, they should have scored a lot more points than they did against that over-worked Dan Quinn defense.

For as frustrating as an RPO and zone-read offense is, it’s still rather gimmick-y and unsustainable. A half-dozen times they could have drawn flags for ineligible player downfield and the zone-read runs place an unhealthy amount of risk on the health of the signal caller.

Those are the exact reasons we see this type of offense predominantly at the college level and not in the pros. It’s effective, but not sustainable.

The Philly defense is even less worrisome. The Dallas Cowboys were one-dimensional and riddled with self-induced errors, yet they were a Noah Brown butt cheek away from silencing the stadium. To think they still scored 17 points against a well-regarded defense tells you how narrow this gap is. A gap that looked significant before the season began.