Dallas Cowboys’ season-opening loss to Tampa wakes up the echoes of Dave Campo era
Week 1 Dallas Cowboys report card:
A: The punter. Whatever his name is. Bryan something or other.
A: The kicker. Whatever his name is. Bill, or Brett ... something.
A: Micah Parsons. Gene Jones needs to call a sculptor for a new statue.
F: Everyone else.
More than 93,000 people crammed into AT&T Stadium on Sunday night to watch the Dallas Cowboys play football.
Rather than play football, they played awful instead.
Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers left DFW with a 19-3 win, and the Cowboys fans who stuck around ‘til the end left AT&T Stadium with one of the big four Ds:
Dejected. Denial. Demoralized. Drunk.
This was Dave Campo era awful.
But there is not a single reason to panic.
Everyone not named Jones saw this coming.
The Cowboys asked Dak Prescott to be Tom Brady when he can’t. Because he’s not Tom Brady.
In their 2022 season debut, the Cowboys receivers and offensive skill players were just a tick due south of Terrible.
They didn’t catch passes. They didn’t get open. They didn’t get separation. They dropped passes.
To do his part, Dak threw some bad passes, too. He played maybe the worst game of his career, on NBC’s Sunday Night Football no less.
Just to make sure they didn’t feel alone, the offensive line was bad, too.
And the Cowboys, again under coach Mike McCarthy, kept the officials busy by committing penalties all over the field, in all four quarters.
The Cowboys trailed 19-3 with 3:23 remaining in the third quarter. It only felt closer to 99-3.
At that point, Dak was 7-of-17 passing for 57 yards with one interception, and a sack. He had at least two other passes that could have been intercepted.
On the first play after the Bucs expanded their lead to 16, Dak’s pass towards the sideline was on target if the intended receiver had Shaquille O’Neal’s height.
The play after that gem, Dak was sacked.
This was the same opponent Dak shredded for more than 400 yards passing against in Week 1 last season.
One glaring difference from last season to this season, there is no Amari Cooper.
The Pro Bowl receiver was traded to Cleveland in the offseason, mostly because the Cowboys coaches really didn’t like him.
It left Dak with Cee Dee Lamb in the role of the No. 1 receiver, and a bunch of guys you can’t, or don’t want to, name.
The last time the Cowboys passing game looked this bad was 2018, after they had dumped Dez Bryant and opted to go with Allen Hurns and a bunch of spares. It led the team to trade for Amari Cooper during the season.
With Cooper now in Cleveland, the plan is to run the ball with running back Ezekiel Elliott, sprinkled with some Tony Pollard.
Then Dak throws it.
That was the plan. That will remain the plan.
As far as the plan working, Week 1’s results looked worse than Week 1 of the preseason.
With less than seven minutes remaining in the game, the Cowboys averaged 3.6 yards per play. Dak averaged 4.8 yards per passing attempt.
The Cowboys had less than 200 yards of total offense. They had eight first downs.
These are Texas A&M versus Appalachian State type offensive statistics.
It was about that time Dak had to leave the game with an injury to his right hand after he took a hit by Bucs linebacker Shaq Barrett.
As Dak ran to the locker room for X-rays, backup Cooper Rush entered the game, and took a beating.
Dak needs surgery, and will be out several weeks.
With less than three minutes remaining in the game, more than half of the fans at AT&T Stadium were going home.
For those who stayed, they were either Dejected in Denial, Demoralized, or Drunk.
But that punter and kicker had themselves a day.
This story was originally published September 11, 2022 at 10:20 PM.
