Erasing a 21-0 deficit to win is awesome under any circumstance. That it came against the Philadelphia Eagles, who were riding a four-game winning streak and entered Week 12 as the Super Bowl favorites, makes it all the more enjoyable for Dallas Cowboys fans.
While Dak Prescott, George Pickens, and Brandon Aubrey technically won the game, it was the Cowboys' defense -- yes, you heard that right -- that truly propelled the comeback. Matt Eberflus' group strung together eight consecutive stops to end the game.
Saquon Barkley never got going, and the secondary really hunkered down after allowing early success to A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. Frustrations from the Eagles boiled over after the game, with Pro Bowl guard Landon Dickerson throwing his own coaching staff under the bus.
Cowboys made Landon Dickerson throw the Eagles' coaching staff under the bus
"I think a big thing is ... time on task,"Dickerson said. "Obviously, you can't run every play to every defense during the week, so I think we really just have to hone in on having a game plan for every defense that a team has run, and every possible defense that they could run, and make sure that we can execute against all of them."
Dickerson essentially admitted that the Eagles didn't do enough prep during the week. While it's impossible to cover an opponent's entire playbook, Dickerson conceded that Philly was not prepared to face Dallas' five-man fronts, which have become the norm following the Quinnen Williams trade.
"They (the Cowboys) gave us a defense that they rarely run and we just didn't execute the game plan we had," Dickerson said. ... "Just five-down fronts. It's not usually, typically something they were running a whole lot, and turns out that was their flavor of the day."
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The entire Cowboys' defensive line showed up, but the Eagles had no answer for Williams, which speaks to how unprepared they were to counter the five-man front. According to Next Gen Stats, Williams tallied a career-high eight pressures on 30 rushes. All of them came on 1-on-1 matchups, and Williams' 26.7 percent double-team rate was his second-lowest of the season.
As a team, Dallas finished with 23 pressures and 19 hurries. They only had one sack, but it couldn't have happened at a better time: a 3rd-and-2 from the Eagles' 37 on the first play after the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter. Osa Odighizuwa broke free and sacked Jalen Hurts for a 13-yard loss. Ironically, the Cowboys only rushed four on the play.
There admittedly isn't a lot of film on the Cowboys' defense with Williams as the centerpiece, but it's clear Dickerson thought Philadelphia wasn't prepared enough. He's not one to air out his coaches or teammates to the media, so the fact that he went that far says a lot.