Cowboys-Eagles NFL Kickoff Recap!

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1:35Nick Shook:That's it. No haggling, no hassles, no pressure. Get all the details and a real offer today at CarMax.com. Want to drive? CarMax. The ball at the 45. Prescott finds them up. Motion to the near side. Kerbin.

1:55Bonds faking the blitz. No, he's coming. Back goes Prescott. He's going deep down the far side of the field, and it's incomplete.

2:03Nick Shook:Intended for Lamb, who dove for the football, and he could not hold on as he crashed in the turf. And the Eagles take over on down. A weird highlight for a weird game. 24-20, the Eagles kick off the season the same way they ended last season with a victory, but, man, it looked different. It looked weird. we had an ejection before a play from a scrimmage. We had a Dak Prescott touchdown saving tackle. We had more Jalen Hurts scramble touchdowns than we had all of last season. And yes, we had an hour and four minute lightning delay, which turned one of the best offensive games you would ever want to see to a complete offensive no-show.

2:49And it ends with a CD lamb drop, his fourth of the game, and the Eagles escape a strange opening night that we will not forget. I will not forget the start of this season because I'm doing it with Nick Shook. We're going to be doing it on all the primetime games all season. Welcome, Nick. What stands out to you out of this game?

3:10Nick Shook:It's an often used phrase. Oh, it was a tale of two halves. Well, it was a tale of two and a half quarters and then a quarter and a half sandwiched around an hour long weather delay. Talk about completely different games. I mean, an offensive display from both teams. Punters got the whole first half off. They come out of the break and it just dies. And it just becomes not so much a defensive game, but just a battle of attrition that the Eagles ultimately win. And there's really a lot to unpack from this game. I know we're going to get into all of it because there are many layers to this game. And a great example of how week one doesn't tell the story of a whole season for a team, but it can give us some peeks into what it might look like.

3:52Right. So I love that you said it that way, because to me, this was a window into what I think is going to be a different sort of Eagle season. And we even talked about it in the preseason. I think if you look at the defensive talent overall, I think they're going to take a step back and they're going to need their offense to make up for it. And what we didn't expect tonight was that the Cowboys offense would be totally up for the challenge to go toe to toe with that Eagles offense. There was zero punts, as you mentioned. There was zero stops for the first two quarters and 10 minutes. And then the biggest play of the game ultimately was a fumble by Miles Sanders when the Cowboys are in the red zone.

4:34And that set up the DAC tackle that saved a touchdown. That was the very last play before the lightning delay. At that point, we had had eight straight drives with a score. Then that fumble. Afterwards, we had five straight punts and then the turnover on downs that you heard the CeeDee Lamb drop end. And so, you know, they were two completely different games. But I was really struck by how well Dak Prescott and the Cowboys offense moved the ball in that first section. And I do think it's OK for us to divide up the sections a little bit. And I'll start there. and I noticed by the end of the game shook, like the Eagles kept their defensive linemen on the field that you just wouldn't expect the entire game.

5:21So it was a Jomo, the defensive tackle, like playing more snaps than he's ever played. Nolan Smith, not leaving the field at all. Jordan Davis, who didn't really have a great night, not leaving the field at all. Jalex Hunt, who's going to be a big time player for this year, like leaving the field occasionally and having a nice night. and it's these guys being asked to really step up in ways that they hadn't before and then the second cornerback spot which we talked about all offseason Adoree Jackson just getting flamed over and over and over and I know it sounds like we're starting negative on this Eagles defense but as much as I want to you know criticize them for struggling early they got the stops late with a little fortune and I want to give the Cowboys credit on offense too that they were making that Eagles defense look bad

6:04Nick Shook:yeah if you're watching on YouTube you'll see I have this notepad here One of my first notes is Adorey Jackson is getting absolutely cooked by the Cowboys, and it didn't matter who they were targeting. I mean, early in this game, I was just thinking, oh, God. Like, this was kind of a unique situation because Jalen Carter excuses himself from the game by spitting at Dak Prescott, you know, before the first play from scrimmage. But that changes the entire complexity of the game because then they can't get that interior pass rush. They have to lean more on the secondary and it immediately exposes how the losses that they had in their secondary could be a weakness for them.

6:39Nick Shook:And then it kind of unfolds from there. Two things I really took away from the first half were I see the vision with Brian Schottenheimer's offense. This Cowboys offense is better than I expected it to be. Even Javante Williams was better than I expected him to be. And also, they may just have to be this team all year because I'm not sure that this defense is going to hold up against some of the better offensive teams. I think it was Dave Hellman from The Athletic tweeted, they're essentially the Cincinnati Bengals with a star on their helmet. Like, that's what they're doing. That's like a good case scenario for them.

7:13I would feel good about that Cowboys over eight wins that I went head-to-head with Nick Wright. That was before the Parsons trade, but I'm standing by it, and I still feel okay because, yeah, if you have a quarterback that is as advanced mentally as Doc Prescott, and he saw a lot of what was coming in this game and made the right decisions and was not afraid to make difficult throws. And the lamb drops really killed multiple drives. I mean, two second half after the lightning delay drives basically were ended by dimes by Dak Prescott that CeeDee Lamb dropped. And I was really impressed with him on this night.

7:54And you mentioned the Jalen Carter ejection, and I alluded to it right off the top that that happens before there's a play. and Eagles fans will, I think, hold on to that for the next 10 days before their week two game and they'll think, okay, that's the reason everything went haywire. And it is a big reason. He is the most important player in this game in this side of the ball for the Eagles. And so let's start a little bit with Spitgate. He spits in Dak Prescott's face, gets tossed after the kickoff where unfortunately the Eagles lose a good special teamer, Ben Van Sumeren, to what looked like a serious injury.

8:36He's getting carded. The two sides are kind of jawing back and forth. At the time he gets ejected, we did not know that there was a first spitter. And that first spitter was Dak Prescott. Good job by the NBC crew unveiling the tape after we came back from the lightning delay. It was kind of dramatic and showing that actually, they were jawing at each other, Jalen Carter was over the line of skirmish and was all by himself, kind of near the Cowboys offensive line and Dak. And the cameras caught Dak just kind of spitting into the ground. But he did step forward, was kind of looking at Jalen Carter, spitting to the ground.

9:14And to be fair, he's like five feet away from Jalen Carter at this time. But he spits into the ground. He's talking to Jalen Carter. We don't know what he said at this time. And he's got a big grin on his face and then Carter walks right up to him, gets face to face and spits on the man, which you just can't do. You got to have to have a code. I don't think the ejection was out of bounds. I think there's an absolute chance that Jalen Carter gets suspended and that back and forth. And maybe it was Dak Prescott, you know, breaking out his inner Chauncey Gardner Johnson being kind of a starter there.

9:46You know, you know, a shit stir as it were. Sorry, Eric, to give you more work to edit on what's going to be a long night. But he gets Jalen Carter, their best player, out of the game. And they never really seem to recover defensively.

10:02Nick Shook:Well, it's like they highlighted immediately on the broadcast, this changes the Cowboys' entire game plan because now they can attack the middle of the Eagles' front. And Brian Schottenheimer called a lot of runs in the A-gap. He was targeting the interior of that defensive line on the ground plenty often in that first drive. And it kept that offense really balanced and allowed them to move the football pretty much at will throughout the first half. But I also wonder if we'd never hit that weather delay, would we have ever gotten this footage? Would it be treated like the Zapruder film? And how does this factor into how the league, you know, suspends Jalen Carter?

10:33Nick Shook:Additionally, I'm curious to see how that unfolds. That's a great point, Chuck, because if the flow of the game, I don't think we get that. They had time to go back and look at that. Even then it was after they spent like 45 minutes talking about, you know, how Michael Jordan's impacted Jalen Hurts's life. I mean, you know, Chris Collinsworth and Tirico and the entire NBC crew is, you know, earning their money, just spinning their wheels. Meanwhile, I'm over watching a great Naomi Osaka match. I mean, that's what the real ball knowers were doing at that point. I mean, at that point, what's there to do?

11:05The football game's not happening. OK, we we talk about how great the Cowboys offense started. And I thought it was a bad sign, though, Shook, that they started the game touchdown, touchdown, field goal, and then another field goal on like a 45 second end of the half. Good drive by Dak Prescott to get some points before the end of the half. And yet, despite how perfect that half was, it was a 99 percentile success rate half, according to Shiel Kapadia over at the ringer. They were actually trailing at halftime. So they had more possessions. They had a perfect offensive half, essentially, and they were trailing at halftime.

11:40And that felt like a bad sign for the Cowboys defense. You got to give Hertz and this offense and Saquon Barkley and even Jahan Dotson some credit for how the Eagles offense answered every score that the Cowboys offense had in the first half of this game.

11:58Nick Shook:Yeah, I mean, if you look at, I mean, Dotson had a great catch late in the first half as well. But I also think that it's going to fuel the narrative. And I think this narrative would have been even stronger in the days to come if the second half followed the course of the first half which it would have been the cowboys trade away their best defensive player and then they can't stop a nosebleed against their rivals on the open and kickoff night and then because it ground to a halt people kind of forgot about that but i think it also kind of highlighted the the the difference in these teams the difference in how the cowboys strengths are basically how they have to move the football they have to basically air it out the entire game and and i think it gave dak prescott a lot of credit granted it was two different halves You can't blame this one on Dak.

12:39Nick Shook:Like, he played a great game. Not even close. Especially in the second half. It's going to be interesting to see how they're perceived after just one game. Okay. I mean, perception, whatever. I don't care about the perception. These two teams could not have been more even to me throughout the entire game. I mean, the Eagles won. Good job by them. The second that that fumble happened, that was the biggest play of the game. But when we broke for the lightning delay, which again went an hour and four minutes, the stats were almost entirely even in every respect. Yardage, yards per play, basically everything.

13:16And I give the Cowboys credit actually for staying balanced on offense, even though Dak Prescott was getting the big plays and even got a big pass interference to George Pickens that was called on Quinion Mitchell, who stayed on Pickens early in the game, eventually went over to CeeDee Lamb a little bit. But for the most part, it was burnt toast with Adoree Jackson going up against CeeDee Lamb. But the Eagles offense, like I mentioned, they were just methodical and Hurts was scrambling so much. He ends up as the leading rusher in this game, Shook, with 62 yards on the ground, two touchdowns. He did not have a scrambled touchdown all of last year.

13:53I think you have to go back to like October of 2023 to find a scrambled touchdown for him. And so whenever he couldn't find his first read, he was taking off with his legs. And it was working. And ultimately, I mentioned that 99 percentile success rate that the Cowboys had in terms of comparing it to other NFL teams and offenses before the lightning delay. The Eagles had that, too. You know, they would have basically had two of the best games any offenses have had all of last season through that point in the game. They were essentially pitching a shutout. And so even though Hertz wasn't getting to the outside, wasn't getting to A.J.

14:30Brown, who didn't have a target until late. They can just beat you so many different types of ways. And ultimately, they do deserve a little bit of credit for scoring all those points. And then finally, at the very end of the game, getting a first down that sealed it.

14:45Nick Shook:Yeah, it's a bad time for me to rank Jalen Hurts outside of the top 10 in the QB index. So I know Eagles fans are going to come for me because he carried this offense, especially in the first half. Every play that they made moving the ball down the field, whether it was through the air or with his legs, it was all centered on Jalen Hurts. And you're right. It's a great example of how, I don't even care if you win the Super Bowl, how no two teams are the same from year to year because this was not their identity last year. And in fact, in the fourth quarter, I'm just waiting for Saquon to be the same closer that he was last year.

15:14Nick Shook:And he had some nice plays and everything, but it wasn't him. Third down, fourth down, you got to get a first down. You're out of tush push range. You line up five wide and Jalen Hurts takes off for a scramble for a first down. Because that was their most successful play was a scramble. They knew that. That was on the docket. Yes, and I have to give a lot of credit to new O.C. Kevin Petulo because there was a period in this game where after the delay, I don't know what happened to Matt Iverflus. If he went in the locker room and just got really pissed off or something, but he came out with pure aggression in his play calling on that first series.

15:42Nick Shook:Blitz is on second and third down. Stacks the box with eight on first down. Basically saying, you're not finishing us with Saquon. We're not letting you get out from deep in your own territory. We are going to fight all the way to the end. And for a sequence there, Petulo didn't really have an answer for that blitz. But when it came down to crunch time, he turned to his best player on offense, who wears number one, who is the quarterback, and asked him to go get the win. And he did. And that is a huge feather in the cap of the Eagles offense as they evolve from year to year. And it makes them that much more dangerous because we know how talented they are.

16:11Nick Shook:They also had to deal with an injury to Landon Dickerson, by the way, at left guard. Toth comes in to replace him. They largely don't miss a beat except for when they were dealing with some pressures. It's an example of resilience with this Eagles team. They've been there. They've done that. They know how to win these close games, and they did it tonight. Yeah, Dickerson's back injury is something to watch. He looked like he was struggling with it before the lightning break, and then afterwards he was not able to continue. And yeah, when they came back from the break, they got four more drives, and they went three and out.

16:40They had an 11-play drive where they got three first downs, but ultimately had to punt, and then they went three and out again. So they weren't able to close the game. You're right. It's absolutely different. And I was about to send one of those tweets out. And I'm glad I didn't. Thinking like, this is zooming towards worst defensive performance of the Vic Fangio era. And that's how it was trending for a while. When the Cowboys were in the red zone, that was about when I was about to send it. And then it did flip. But by the numbers, that actually was the worst half of football defensively that they had compared to all of last year under Vic Fangio.

17:17And then they got it together, got more pressure on Dak Prescott. And I'm glad you mentioned the Eberflus changing his strategy because ultimately I don't think this Cowboys defense is talented enough up front. I've been talking about their depth edge. It didn't really show up tonight. Ezeraku was quiet. I thought Marshawn Nealon plays really hard and made a bunch of plays. Dante Fowler had like one good pressure, but ultimately Sam Williams was kind of all over the place. that they're not great overall up front. Odigizu was okay. But after the break, they had not blitzed at all before it shook, and they blitzed six times after it.

17:55And the pressure rate for both quarterbacks went from very low before the break to sky high afterwards. So it really was two different games, but maybe it's a lesson for the Cowboys that, look, they're going to have to scheme up some pressure. They're going to have to be creative. And there were positives to take from this game, including that Trevon Diggs played a lot of this game. Not every snap by any means. He was a part-time rotational player, but that was a plus that he got to get out there and play.

18:20Nick Shook:He was healthy enough to be used on one of those blitzes in that first series after the delay. I want to keep saying after halftime, but it wasn't after halftime. It is after the delay, though. I know it's a very strange game to talk about and to analyze because it was completely two different games. I know Eric was back there. He said he's up watching it, and I feel that. It's like all of America is having a great time. Then this happens, And then the vibes are just weird and off and the game is off afterwards. It's just, just one of those things. Yeah. I want to spotlight a couple of guys because obviously the news last week, the Micah Parsons being traded, Kenny Clark comes to Dallas and that deal had a couple of moments.

18:57Nick Shook:What I really noticed after the delay was the Cowboys started to win up front and now obviously not enough to win the game, but they did start to get a little bit of a surge. Clark was in on one of those with Nealon for that sack of Jalen hurts. And I was like, Oh, there is okay there. He makes a play there. And on the other side of the ball, the other sideline, Jihad Campbell, who is my defensive rookie of the year pick, by the way. Great game. Flashed, made key plays, forced a fumble. He forced that Miles Sanders fumble that turned the game more toward the Eagles' favor. Continue to keep an eye on him.

19:27Nick Shook:He's going to be a big part of this defense, especially if they aren't quite as strong up front as they were last year. And if they have issues in the secondary, they're going to have to lean on those linebackers more. And he's a really nice complement to Zach Bond. I can't believe it took us almost 20 minutes to get to Jihad Campbell. I mean, I got 15 texts from our friend Jordan Rodriguez about it. Just kidding. I mean, it was like two, but we're excited about Campbell and him running down the post in the middle of the field in coverage. And he got beat on one of the plays where it ended up being a penalty, not on him, but that Dak Prescott was trying to get a touchdown.

20:01But he made an incredible play in coverage on another. And the thing that really struck me was he didn't leave the field. Zach Bond played literally every single snap of the game, but Jahad Campbell played 51 out of 56 snaps. So that is what every team is looking for, to have two linebackers that they can actually keep on the field that can make a difference as pass rushers in run defense. And they both made plays in coverage tonight. Like, that is some special stuff. And I think we're going to look back and wonder, how did Campbell and Josh Simmons slip to 31 and 32? The two teams that made the Super Bowl last year.

20:40And I like that defensive rookie of the year picked by you. We'll see about Abdul Carter. There'll be other guys. But man, what a strong first statement by your boy, Jihad Campbell, tonight.

20:51Nick Shook:Also, a peek into the Eagles maybe not being as deep defensively as they were in previous years because of attrition, because guys leave in free agency. With these rotations or lack thereof. Like a ton of guys played a ton of snaps, as we've already talked about. And I think I worry about their depth over the course of a season. Like Sidney Brown gets a little dinged up tonight. Andrew Makuba has to come in and replace him. I worry about their depth at the second and third level, but that's, I mean, that's football and they'll figure out ways to do it. But it was interesting that they did not rotate a lot of guys tonight.

21:17All right, let's take a quick break. We're going to come back. We will wrap up our thoughts on the Cowboys and Eagles. We'll have a couple of quick surprising, but important items of news, and then we'll send you on your way. We're here late at Chris Wessling's podcast studio.