The Dallas Cowboys remain undefeated to start the 2019 season after the 31-6 victory over the Miami Dolphins Sunday afternoon. It wasn't the prettiest of wins by any means, but they did what they needed to do in order to secure the W, meaning they still have a firm hold over the NFC East division.
The way the Cowboys played yesterday afternoon against the Dolphins is probably best described as a tale of two halves. Dallas came out and started the game pretty flat against Miami. Offensively and defensively they struggled to get anything going in the first two quarters of the game yesterday. Luckily though, they were able to regroup at halftime and dominate the second half.
A win is a win though no matter how the Dallas Cowboys got there. That's the important thing to remember. With that in mind, let's get to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for the Cowboys from Week 3 against the Dolphins.
The Good
It was inevitable Quarterback Dak Prescott would end up struggling a little bit at some point, but it wasn't expected to be this week against the Miami Dolphins. Luckily though the Dallas Cowboys rushing attack gained some steam, which is what I'm going to go with as the good this week. Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard may have taken a while to get going, but it was their legs that secured the “W” for Dallas.
Not so surprisingly, but Zeke was expected to have a pretty big game against the Dolphins Sunday afternoon. It wasn't exactly easy, but he turned his 19 carries into 125 yards and average 6.6 yards per carry. What was surprising though was how well Tony Pollard played. He turned 13 carries into 103 rushing yards and a touchdown, averaging an impressive 7.9 yards per carry. This double-headed monster could be a force to be reckoned with as the season progresses.
The Bad
I'm naturally not a negative person, so determining what to put in the bad category each week is typically a challenge for me. But, not this week. I think the bad Sunday afternoon for the Dallas Cowboys was all of the inopportune penalties they accumulated against the Miami Dolphins. These penalties really ended up hurting them on both sides the ball.
CB Chidobe Awuzie had some costly penalties in the passing game. Opposing QBs are going to continue to target him until he learns to get his head around and locate the ball. LG Connor Williams had a holding penalty that negated a Randall Cobb TD. RT La'el Collins' holding penalty that cost Zeke a big play. And, CB Anthony Brown had a roughing the kicker penalty. Those were just a few of the bigger, more costly, penalties the Cowboys accumulated against the Dolphins. There were others, but nonetheless this is absolutely an area Dallas needs to clean up moving forward.
The Ugly
Maybe the expectations for the Dallas Cowboys defense heading into the 2019 season were set a little too high. Through the first three weeks they haven't looked like the same unit we had grown accustomed to seeing in 2018 and were especially a little disappointing this week against Miami Dolphins. Because of that they are my choice for the ugly in Week 3 for the Cowboys.
I don't know about you, but the Cowboys defense gave up far too many big plays to a subpar Dolphins offense. Dallas' entire defensive unit isn't playing up to their talent as of yet. I'm hoping this is just due to rust that will eventually get knocked off. They do have several key starters who missed a lot of the offseason and others who were banged up this week. This group is just far too talented to be playing like they have so far this season.
