Welcome, world. It's time for another installment in our Monday Moment series.
This week, we travel to East Rutherford, New Jersey where the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants played each other to a standstill for much of four quarters. As you all know, the Cowboys ended up losing a very tough and defensive-dominated game on this Sunday night, but we are here to break down one of their most creative offensive plays of the entire season.
In fact, their first and only touchdown from this Sunday night loss might be my favorite individually isolated play from the entire 2016 season.
Let's check the tape!
The Cowboys come out in eleven personnel, but motion Vince Mayle tight to the formation. Mayle almost serves as a second tight end in his role here, but this is still eleven.
With Dez Bryant off the field and the Cowboys in a relatively heavy set, things are looking like run to the Giants defense. As the Cowboys offensive line executes their wide zone blocking scheme, and Ezekiel Elliott goes hard left as if he's about to catch a pitch, this now really looks like run to the Giants.
Quarterback Dak Prescott also does what he does best, selling the pitch left with authority and then rolling out to his right.
So, New York bites.
Mayle continues across the line of scrimmage, and gets out into the right flats. The Giants secondary does a decent job of recovering on Mayle, and chasing him out to the sideline. Where they messed up, however, was in losing track of Terrance Williams
Williams does an excellent job of sneaking behind the linebackers, and getting lost in the play action shuffle. Staying disciplined (well, trying) to Elliott's run threat, the near side safety comes up field and begins to angle towards Zeke.
Because of this over-aggression, Williams is left wide open down the field for the easiest touchdown of the entire season. This throw and catch gave the Cowboys a 7-0 lead, and had Cowboys nation thinking they were in for a happy night.
Of course, things didn't end well on this game, but it's still an extremely impressive play nonetheless.
