When Brian Schottenheimer addressed his Cowboys at halftime Sunday, no one was using it Tragic events of November 6 To make excuses for what happened in the first 30 minutes, or to motivate for a better performance in the final 30 minutes against the reigning world champions.
At the time, the first-year head coach was trying to defeat the Eagles.
“So I challenged them at halftime on the fact that we were beating ourselves, and if we started performing a little bit better, we’d be OK – and the belief was there,” Schottenheimer told me over the phone a few minutes after the match ended. “I literally asked people, I said, Do you guys believe? And to a stupid man, they all shouted, ‘Yes.’
It’s a simple thing any football coach, at any level, can ask of his team when facing a double-digit deficit. Sometimes it works. Sometimes this does not happen. In this case, it happened, and the Cowboys played better football, chipping away and eventually climbing out of a 21–0 hole to defeat Philadelphia 24–21 on a walk-off, game-winning field goal.
Still, with all this established, Marshon Neeland never left Cowboys mind sunday.
The team’s promising young defensive end has now been gone for 18 days, and that means a lot of the youngster is still reeling from the loss of his teammate. Thus, a fair perspective to put it into perspective was that coaches and players had to prepare themselves for the Raiders on Monday in Week 11, then the Eagles in a short week and, from there, the Chiefs, whom the Cowboys will host on Thanksgiving.
Here’s how the Cowboys found it, knowing they had a chance to tell the story of how they played football over the last two weeks.
“This team’s resiliency was tested with the Marshawn loss, and in something bigger than football, right?” Schottenheimer said. “But the distraction of being able to do what we love to do and honor Marshon drives us. I’ll put it this way. We want to play well, we want to win to honor Marshon. Because the way Marshon played the game, Albert, I mean, he played the game with his hair on fire, man. He was absolutely incredibly emotional on the football field.
“I think that’s what you’re seeing from our football team.”
Anyone watching on Sunday can confirm this.
Neeland’s death occurred during the Cowboys’ bye week, when most of the team was spread out across the country to rest before the extended season. So as the news spread, there was really no way to get everyone together en masse.
“The last thing you ever want to deal with is that situation,” Schottenheimer said, “and then you have to deal with it over the phone.”
Dallas’ first game, on the other hand, was on a Monday night, giving the staff an extra day to work as players returned to the facility, and Schottenheimer devoted that day entirely to dealing with the crisis. There was no football on Monday, November 10. Instead, the cowboys gathered to stick together, respect Neyland, and trust each other.
Schottenheimer continued, “We had a team meeting and we just talked and we laughed and we cried and we cried some more.” “We had some experts there that we could talk to, we had breakout sessions where we could talk about it, share our feelings. I’m telling you, man, the healing for me started the moment I could put my arms around some of these guys, and tell them I love them and tell them how much I miss Marshon, and that’s where it started.
“And we have such a great culture, man. And I know some people think it’s bulls—. But this locker room is different. This locker room is special. This locker room loves each other. This locker room will fight to the end for each other, and Marshon was a big part of that. And if anything, I think it brings us even closer together.”
As Schottenheimer saw it, it had to happen, because it was what his players wanted.
Often, in such situations, individual players will emerge as the key to healing the group. So when the Cowboys coach and I talked, I thought I’d ask if it was the same here.
“The answer is yes,” he said. “But what I don’t want to do is isolate and pick out three or four people, because that’s really everybody. If you could be a fly on the wall in some of these breakout meetings, and listen to people talking about how it affected them and affected them, and how much pain they were going through, trying to ask the question why that is, Man, what could we have done differently ,
Schottenheimer’s voice slowed slightly, and then he continued.
He said, ‘But I would say everybody on the defensive line was unbelievable rather than any one.’ There were families. But they were incredible the whole time.”
And in the final 30 minutes on Sunday, the energy that Schottenheimer talked about was present in Neyland’s game was scattered across the field at AT&T Stadium.
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A lot of strange things happened in the third and fourth quarters of Sunday’s game. Jake Elliott missed his first field goal of November when an offensive pass interference flag on DeVonta Smith short-circuited a drive. Saquon Barkley lost his first fumble of the season on a beautiful strip to Sam Williams. And when that turnover failed to produce points for Dallas, Marquise Bell and Elijah Clarke violently passed punt returner Xavier Gipson, knocking the ball loose and giving Dallas possession at the Philly 8.
And when it didn’t end up in the Dallas score, either, with the gamble falling short on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line (“I knew I was supposed to do that and I’d do it again. I wanted to try to put that team away,” Schottenheimer said.), the Cowboys pounced. still All it took was Jake Ferguson’s luck to get to Brandon Oubre’s eventual 42-yard game-winner, bouncing out of bounds right in front of the head coach.
So, yes, the Cowboys got a bit of a break. Despite a lot of things going wrong at the beginning of the game, a lot of them still made it to the end. But, no, Schottenheimer wasn’t going along with the idea that there’s some kind of higher power at work here. While he wants to make Neyland proud, and you can talk as long as you want about how united his team has been during the tragedy, he also wants to do right by those who are going through it.
“I don’t really think so,” he said. “I think this: It’s been very well noted that our defense was really struggling leading up to the bye. Obviously, they played really well last week. In terms of stopping the run, they played very well again tonight. It’s two weeks in a row (that) teams haven’t even tried to run the ball. I mean, you held Saquon Barkley to 10 carries for 22 yards, man? But I think the confidence is there because we We know how good we are offensively, we know how fast we can score, how explosive we can be.
“And now that the defense is playing at the level that they’re playing at, there’s a confidence about this team. But I think when you go through pain and you go through incredible loss and grief, there’s a greater strength that goes with that. There’s a greater strength that goes into that.”
From a football standpoint, there’s no doubt that the Cowboys have made progress.
As Schottenheimer said, this offense is one of the most powerful offenses in the NFL. Dak Prescott is playing good ball, Javonte Williams is approaching 1,000 yards rushing, George Pickens has 67 catches for 1,054 yards and eight touchdowns in 11 games, and he and No. 1 target CeeDee Lamb have meshed well. A young line is also improving. Meanwhile, the significant investment on the interior of the defensive line has looked smart over the past two weeks, as Matt Eberflus’s unit looks to turn the corner — last week against a shaky foe, this week against a good foe.
And then, there’s that intangible piece where something big seems to be happening between the players on the team.
Along those lines, it would have been easy to travel this week. After the emotional stress of the past few weeks, and then getting home from Vegas at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, it would have been easy to settle into reality a bit and let the weight of it all take over. This could have happened when the Eagles took a 21-0 lead.
Instead, it was quite the opposite.
“We’re connected for life through this,” Schottenheimer said. “And, even tonight, we came here after the big win and we had a flag that was made in honor of Marshon that Osa held up for the defensive introductions. People were just dancing in the middle of the locker room and passing the flag to each other. And I mean, it warmed my heart, man. It really happened.
“It just bothered me so much… I just knew he was looking down on us and he was very proud of what these guys were able to overcome.”
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