Dak had the ball in his hands late in the 4th quarter. He lost 12 yards in three plays. Bryce Young then did what Dak is paid more than anyone else to do - drive your team down to put the game away with a walk off score.
so simple fans look at the stats and go Dak's fault. but if you watched the game in that series and even the series before, couple of things stood out. one, Carolina rushed with 4 players and dropped 7 into coverage. taking away the deep ball. ok, so we should have time to throw, the problem was they got the pass rush even rushing 4, and actually the RDE moved down the line expecting the pass to go to Williams and they bottled him up. their defense played it perfectly, knowing we are not going to run the ball, lets take away the deep ball and you figure with 4, we have more time to throw, but we didn't. we fell right into that trap. the very next play, same thing, this time what I blame dak for is throwing it too close to Williams and Williams caught it and there were 4 players in the area tackling him. Dak should have just thrown it in his direction and into the ground. again, defense played it perfectly. and next play the same thing, except this time swing pass to the other side. rushed with three. dropped LBs and all safties and CBs were deep, taking away the deep ball. Luepke made the catch, carolina knowing we are not going to get all the yards back with a swing pass. All three plays Dak was looking down field, didn't see anything open and pass rush got there and had to throw a swing pass. even if they were incomplete passes, we would not have gotten a first down....results would have been the same.....
the issue was that we had no running threat and carolina figured that out and played perfect defense. knowing Dak needs a strong running game for his passing game to work, we didn't have it. Dak is not mahomes, thus I am not surprised this happened. I am sure you will say but $60M!!!
and Bryce young played against the cowboys defense. this defense at this moment is #2 all time worst defense. let that sink in for a moment. we gave up 216 yards rushing. that last drive they had 37 yards rushing, 25 yards passing. 7 of the 13 plays were runs. it was Rico Dowdle beating the cowboys on the ground. not bryce young beating the cowboys. Rico had himself a day.
but given Dak detractors just want to blame dak, they look at final stats and go hey look at what happened. -12 yards. but how did we get there and why....that has to be addressed, which is running game. now teams will focus on taking our running game away and we are doomed. put mahomes in there and results would have most probably been the same. maybe we don't lose 12 yards and just end up with zero yards. defense would still be acting the same and giving up a score.
QB is not just what ails this team. tell me if you think this is a superbowl contender with Mahomes at the helm?. I know your answer will probably be, we would have a better chance. but would they be a superbowl contender?
