ARLINGTON, Texas — On the first play of the fourth quarter Monday night, the Dallas Cowboys got a jolt of positivity.
Brandon Aubrey gave Dallas a three-point lead on his 47-yard field goal that was set up by Rico Dowdle’s 14-yard run on the final play of the third quarter.
Dallas had a good chance to extend its winning streak to three games and keep hope alive for a miraculous finish to the season.
Instead, the fourth quarter became a living nightmare.
The postgame vibes, which could have been immaculate, were eerie. Interviews featured hushed tones and heavy emotion. Other interviews were prevented from even taking place.
It all began on the sixth play of the final quarter in the Cowboys’ 27-20 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.
DeMarvion Overshown’s injury casts dark cloud
Injuries are a brutal part of football, but some situations hit on a different level. A few weeks ago, Cowboys special teams coordinator John Fassel broke down in tears when discussing the season-ending injury of Markquese Bell, one of his top special teams performers.
Monday night, Micah Parsons was brought to tears when DeMarvion Overshown lay on the AT&T Stadium turf, writhing in pain early in the fourth quarter after his leg got caught under the body of Bengals center Ted Karras.
“I cried,” an emotional Parsons said. “That’s like my little bro, bro. He don’t deserve that, either. He really don’t. To understand what he’s going to have to go through and to be there for him, physically (and) mentally. It’s just so challenging because he’s so talented. The year he was having. I really just don’t think that’s fair, either.”
Life in the NFL happens fast. After the last game the Cowboys played, a 27-20 win over the New York Giants on Thanksgiving, Parsons conducted his postgame media availability in the middle of the locker room. He was beaming, talking about how he knew from the outset that Overshown would be an All-Pro player and what a joy it was to play alongside him.
“He’s his own special specimen,” Parsons said. “He’s going to be felt every play. He’s a wild cat out there on the field. Man, I love playing next to him.”
The official word will come down soon but head coach Mike McCarthy said after the game that the injury was “of a serious nature” and “it didn’t look good.” Overshown stayed down for three minutes and required a lot of assistance as he was helped off the field and immediately led down the tunnel for further evaluation.
Wouldn’t want this for anyone else!
One of God’s Toughest Soldiers 🙏🏾Keep me in your prayers…
— DeMarvion Overshown (@AGENT0__) December 10, 2024
Overshown’s injury is a gut punch on multiple levels. Last year, he was the star of training camp as a rookie but his season ended before it started after he tore his left ACL in a preseason game. Overshown began this season with a standout performance against Cleveland and after a few games of getting acclimated to Mike Zimmer’s defense, he became a staple. In the last eight games, he played at least 90 percent of the defensive snaps seven times. Against the Giants 12 days ago, Overshown had a pick six that would be considered one of the Cowboys’ best plays of the season.
Now, his season is over and given the timing of the injury, next season could be in question, too. After Overshown tore his ACL last year, he immediately attacked the long road to recovery with an upbeat attitude. That positive attitude has become his hallmark and will be tested again in the coming months.
Where was Rico Dowdle?
Too often this season, Dallas’ ineffectiveness in the running game has come into question. It was an entirely different story Monday night.
With 6:31 left in the fourth quarter, the Cowboys took over on their own 20-yard line after forcing a Bengals punt with the score tied 20-20. On the first play, Dowdle ran 14 yards — his 18th carry that pushed his rushing total for the night to a career-best 131 yards. He was averaging 7.3 yards per carry and even popped off a 27-yard run earlier in the game. The Bengals entered the game as the league’s 11th-worst rushing defense.
That 14-yard run was the last time Dowdle touched the ball.
Cooper Rush then threw three consecutive incomplete passes. The Cowboys punted, had a devastating special teams mistake and got the ball back with 61 seconds to play, down by a touchdown.
After the game, McCarthy was asked about the run game overall. He said that the Cowboys “didn’t get enough reps at it.” He was asked specifically about Dowdle and McCarthy expressed a similar sentiment, saying the team needs to “just continue to give him opportunities.”
The lack of running attempts has been McCarthy’s common explanation all season, usually accompanied by pointing to games getting out of hand and forcing the Cowboys to abandon the run game.
None of that held up Monday night. The game was tied. Dowdle was in a groove. Cincinnati’s run defense was poor. Ideally, when the Cowboys got the ball back with a little more than six minutes left, they would milk as much clock as possible to set up a game-winning score without giving the ball back to Joe Burrow.
Utilizing a run game that was churning to that point would have helped that cause. It was the time to get more “reps” in the run game and give Dowdle more “opportunities.”
Instead, the Cowboys abandoned Dowdle.
Another special teams gaffe
Aubrey generates a lot of positives for the Cowboys’ special teams, but there have been many glaring warts for the unit this year. We’ve seen multiple failed fake punts that seemed reckless to even attempt — regardless of their results — and lacked creativity in how they were executed. A few weeks ago, Juanyeh Thomas returned an onside kick for a touchdown in a wild finish against the Washington Commanders when the obvious right play to make was to go down — he acknowledged as much after that game. The winning result, and KaVontae Turpin’s dazzling kickoff return touchdown, helped mask that mistake.
The special teams error Monday may be the worst of them all.
At the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter with the score tied, the Bengals faced fourth-and-27 from their own 29. Former Bengals linebacker Nick Vigil blocked rookie Ryan Rehkow’s punt, but it wasn’t enough to send the ball backward. Instead, the ball went beyond the line of scrimmage, taking the first bounce at the 32-yard line.
If the Cowboys simply stayed away from the ball, they get it at the spot of the dead ball. It was taking a Bengals bounce but the Cowboys were going to get the ball either in Bengals territory or right around midfield. They’d have almost a full two minutes and all of their timeouts. They have arguably the best kicker in the NFL in Aubrey, especially from long range.
It was a moot point.
As the ball bounced, Cowboys cornerback Amani Oruwariye tried to scoop up the football. If Oruwariye had cleanly caught the ball, it would have masked the error in judgment but it was a bad decision regardless. The ball squirted through his left arm and into the waiting hands of Cincinnati’s Maema Njongmeta, giving Cowboys fans flashbacks of Nahshon Wright in 2021 against the Denver Broncos and, most famously, Leon Lett’s mistake in 1993 against the Miami Dolphins.
The Cowboys blocks the punt… but it was then touched by a Dallas player… and then recovered by the Bengals 🤯
Chaos. @Bengals ball pic.twitter.com/Uw0l4ebH3v
— NFL (@NFL) December 10, 2024
Cincinnati’s offense came back on the field with a fresh set of downs on its own 43-yard line. Two plays later, Burrow hit Ja’Marr Chase for a 40-yard touchdown, which proved to be the winning score.
“He heard the roar of the crowd,” McCarthy said. “When he turned — I mean, he understands the rule of crossing (the line of scrimmage), and once the ball crosses the line. His response was when he turned, when he heard the crowd, the ball was there and he reacted to it.”
After the game, Oruwariye was shielded from reporters by teammates — led by special teams ace C.J. Goodwin. Oruwariye left the locker room with a group of teammates without fielding questions. Fassel was approached by The Athletic in the locker room and willing to answer questions, but the encounter was broken up by a Cowboys staffer and Fassel was led away before providing any answers.
When the locker room was opened to reporters postgame, Fassel was sitting with Oruwariye, who had a towel draped over his head at his locker, going over material from the game. When Fassel got up to leave, he gave Oruwariye a hug.
Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones was not a fan of the aggressive approach of blocking the punt.
“Obviously, we had a block kick called,” Jones said. “Made the play and then had one in so many odds turn against us. We all would say, ‘Well, why block the kick?’ Just take the kick, get in field goal (range) and kick it. We’ll all be second-guessing that one.”
After the game, McCarthy said the Cowboys “actually had a return called.” The punt block rush wasn’t overly aggressive, with three jammers on the perimeter against the Bengals’ gunners and two players at the line of scrimmage peeling back at the snap of the ball. With a dangerous return man in Turpin, it would make sense that the Cowboys would prepare to get the best possible return to set up the offense.
When asked about the emotional whiplash to go from a blocked punt to Oruwariye mishandling the ball, Jones indicated that the coaching — presumably talking about Fassel — should have been better on how to handle the blocked kick.
“The odds are the coach said we made the play and blocked the punt,” Jones said. “But then we had a one-in-X happen when after blocking the punt, we touched the ball. That all should be figured in before you decide to block the punt, especially the way your odds (are) up against catching the ball on the kick and getting it back out and getting within field goal range.
“We can all second guess that. We would say that you probably had better odds of kicking free and driving down and kicking a field goal but you got the kicking game involved, if we would have kicked the field goal.”
Hindsight makes it easier for Jones to make the point of allowing the punt to be fielded and letting the offense go from there but the two previous possessions — a three-and-out and four-play sequence — both resulted in punts. There was nothing wrong with blocking the punt and giving the offense a short field.
Oruwariye simply botched a basic football play. After Vigil blocked the kick, rookie linebacker Marist Liufau, who was right behind Vigil, turned around and immediately started signaling to get away from the ball. Oruwariye, a six-year NFL vet, had to be better in that situation; he wasn’t and it cost the Cowboys an opportunity to win the game.
(Top photo: Tim Heitman / Imagn Images)
