Cowboys Steamroll Haunted House In Seattle
By Ben Rogers | @BenRogers
DALLAS (105.3 THE FAN) -- It was the scariest game on the Cowboys schedule. It was an angry Frankenstein on steroids waiting for them in a haunted house. If it were a movie, someone in the theatre watching through their fingers would've inadvertently blurted out "DON'T GO IN THERE!!!" as the team bus pulled up to CenturyLink Field.
Russell Wilson was 19-1 during his career at home heading into the game. This year, the frenzied Seattle crowd had already eaten two fantastic teams in Denver and Green Bay.
In fact, the Cowboys' chances of winning this game seemed so small that there were actual discussions on local sportstalk radio about resting injured linebacker Rolando McClain to get him healthy for games down the road where they'd actually have a chance to win.
Then to make matters worse, over the course of the game the Cowboys gifted the Seahawks 17 free points on a blocked punt, a fumbled punt return and a botched shotgun snap. Considering whom they were playing and where they were playing them… insurmountable, right? Well, not so much.
Shockingly, the punch-line ready Cowboys proceeded to utterly dominate the defending Super Bowl champs. Their own mishaps were the only things that kept this contest close.
The Cowboys' steamrolling offensive line of monstrous mauling manbeasts proved to be the scariest thing in the building on Sunday. They controlled the line of scrimmage, time of possession, and ultimately the game.
Dallas had 23 1st downs to Seattle's 9, 162 yards rushing to Seattle's 80, and held the ball for roughly 38 minutes to Seattle's 22. In the 2nd quarter, the Cowboys had a 15-play, 71-yard field goal drive that kept the Seattle offense on the sideline, on ice, for almost 10 minutes.
Defensively, it was a Rod Marinelli masterpiece. A unit of no names swarmed, attacked, got pressure on Wilson and covered his receivers like blankets. More importantly, they got stops on 3rd down… and a huge 4th down too.
In the 1st quarter, Russell Wilson hit Jermaine Kearse for a 53-yard gain on what appeared to be an illegal pick play (where one receiver runs into a defender on purpose to free up another receiver). If that wasn't a pick play, there may actually be no such thing as a pick play. Besides that big gain, Wilson only threw for 73 yards in the game.
Outside of Marshawn Lynch's biggest play of the day, a 32-yard run, he was held to just 29 yards on 9 carries. Percy Harvin, one of the most dangerous Seahawk weapons, contributed exactly -1 yards of offense in the contest. In total, the Seahawks had just two plays of 21+ yards during the game. The Cowboys had seven.
In the end, because their own miscues had them trailing on the scoreboard, it was yet another Tony Romo-engineered 4th quarter comeback drive that put this puppy in the win column for the Cowboys. In case anyone is counting, it was the 26th game-winning drive of his career – most in the NFL since 2006 according to ESPN Stats and Info. That's one more than Peyton Manning, who I'm told is pretty good.
The biggest highlight from that incredible drive, and the entire game for that matter, was a miraculous 3rd and 20 completion to Terrance Williams on the sideline that featured toe-dragging heroics the likes of which we haven't seen since the days of the great Drew Pearson. Once again, it was Romo extending the play by eluding defenders in a rapidly closing pocket. When he's at his best, he almost seems to surf on waves of pocket danger, using some sixth sense of sorts to escape just long enough to dig a little deeper into the hat to find the rabbit.
But games are truly won or lost in the trenches, and although it took some patented Romo magic to move the ball down the field, all it took was handing the ball to DeMarco Murray to put the game away. Their massive 80-yard, 4th quarter touchdown drive ended with smashmouth, soul-stealing, crowd-silencing power-runs of 25, 6 and 15 yards respectively.
Life is good when your football team can run the ball.
Maybe the Jones' had the right idea after all when stockpiling 1st round offensive lineman time and time again. They've created a dominant unit that can take over football games and flat out impose their will. They can both steamroll a defense, and simultaneously suffocate an opposing offense too.
On Sunday, the Cowboys made a statement that they're very much for real. They punched the biggest, baddest bully on the block directly in his mouth, right on his front porch. They're still a young team, prone to make mistakes, but at least now they know for certain that there is no reason for them to fear any team or any stadium in the NFL. That's an incredibly valuable lesson for a team with ambitious designs on becoming a contender.
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