{"id":151801,"date":"2023-11-07T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/?p=151801"},"modified":"2023-11-06T06:33:07","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T11:33:07","slug":"why-dallas-cowboys-lost-philadelphia-eagles-week-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2023\/11\/07\/why-dallas-cowboys-lost-philadelphia-eagles-week-9\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Reasons Why the Dallas Cowboys Lost in NFC East Thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">America\u2019s team went into Lincoln Financial Field with confidence and high expectations. It slowly died down when many bad breaks were favoring the Eagles&#8217; opposition. Dak Prescott still put up an excellent performance, but the Dallas Cowboys still lost despite his best efforts. The late overturned <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2023\/04\/13\/luke-schoonmaker-2023-nfl-draft-profile\/\" target=\"_self\">Luke Schoonmaker<\/a> touchdown hurt the team and was the beginning of the downfall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prescott came back in the game late in the last seconds of the fourth quarter where it became a game of inches. No doubt, it was heartbreaking for Cowboys fans but for the Dallas players who believed they were the better team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prescott <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallascowboys.com\/news\/dak-no-moral-victories-in-cowboys-loss-to-eagles\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">explains<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> more about the loss, \u201cIt&#8217;s a game of inches. That&#8217;s why you&#8217;ve gotta love this game: it&#8217;s tough to win. We fought our asses off. Great NFC East matchup, and they came out with it tonight. An inch or two on one of those few plays and we&#8217;d be talking about a different outcome. They got this one.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It all came down to needing one play, but of course, there\u2019s no excuse as Dallas needed momentum early. Mike McCarthy\u2019s offense is still efficient but it needs the proper makeover to be a contender. The third-quarter unproductivity from Dallas hurt any momentum that the Cowboys had. Despite the breaks, it obviously didn\u2019t work out for Dallas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dak Prescott Postgame: Week 9 | #DALvsPHI | Dallas Cowboys 2023\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oHPKrhrpSjA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2><strong>3 Reasons Why the Dallas Cowboys Lost in NFC East Thriller<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>Penalties, Missed Calls Add Up<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Penalties were costing Dallas all game, it\u2019s nothing new to the Cowboys. They\u2019ve had a long history of penalties that decreased their momentum and even cost them the game. For example, the illegal formation penalty on Chuma Edoga wiped a Tony Pollard touchdown off the board. But the late penalty in the last seconds of the contest put the icing on the cake.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No doubt, Dallas was receiving some huge breaks as well from penalties. The penalties were favoring the Eagles all three quarters and were finally giving the Cowboys breaks late in the fourth quarter. However, some Cowboys fans were<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.star-telegram.com\/sports\/nfl\/dallas-cowboys\/article281473008.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> upset<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with the officiating throughout the night. This might have been the turning point of the matchup which isn\u2019t something new.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cowboys fans are always holding their breath every game waiting for a clean game of officiating, but will have to hold it for longer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Momentum Wasn\u2019t in Favor of Dallas<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The overturning of the Luke Schoonmaker touchdown and Prescott not converting the extra two-point conversion hurt the team. If anything, those two points hurt the most because the Cowboys could\u2019ve kicked a late field goal to take it to overtime, 28-28. However, Prescott had to muster up the will to attempt for a game-winning drive. Let\u2019s get one thing straight, even though teh Dallas Cowboys lost, Prescott still put up 374 yards and three touchdowns. The quarterback had a phenomenal game and this loss shouldn&#8217;t be used against him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It might have been his teammates who needed to step a bit extra to help lead this team. Jalen Hurts had some miscues, but his team was able to hang on for mercy until the end. As for morality, Prescott didn\u2019t hold back on his support for the team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He explains more on his part on what this loss means, \u201cThere are no moral victories in this league, not by any means, but by being inches away, we know we&#8217;re doing the right thing. We&#8217;re gonna keep working, period.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Cowboys\u2019 Running Game Is Declining<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dallas finally saw some bursts of life from <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2023\/08\/04\/running-back-tony-pollard-now-in-the-spotlight\/\" target=\"_self\">Tony Pollard<\/a> in the run game throughout the matchup. However, Prescott has been heavily relying on CeeDee Lamb and of course, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2023\/08\/09\/jake-ferguson-fantasy-football-outlook-2023\/\" target=\"_self\">Jake Ferguson<\/a> as a security blanket. The absence in Pollard\u2019s run game is hurting the team, especially in red-zone drives. It seems like Dallas is missing Ezekiel Elliot\u2019s presence in these situations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Elliott was like a hog in the red zone and gave the Cowboys an advantage to get an easy score. Now, it seems like Jerry Jones should\u2019ve made the move to trade for a running back to help Pollard. That\u2019s too late now, but it would be helpful for Pollard to run different routes in his run game to improve. However, that\u2019s all up to the mindset of McCarthy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo: Eric Hartline &#8211; USA Today Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dallas Cowboys lost in heartbreaking fashion to the Philadelphia Eagles, thanks in large part to the following factors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4795,"featured_media":151814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,54],"tags":[5801,302,7422,8880,9857,5087],"class_list":["post-151801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cowboys","category-editorials","tag-ceedee-lamb","tag-dak-prescott","tag-dallas-cowboys-news","tag-jake-ferguson","tag-luke-schoonmaker","tag-tony-pollard"],"modified_by":"David Latham, Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4795"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}