The Cowboys once again didn't execute when it mattered.
The Dallas Cowboys' 34-31 loss to the Baltimore Ravens at Maracanã Stadium on Sunday night is going to be one that will sting for a while.
Dallas had everything going for it, down at the two-yard line with a touchdown to seal the win seemingly there for the taking with under 30 seconds to go.
But an incompletion, followed by a false start by Luke Schoonmaker, pushed the Cowboys back, and then another incompletion forced the Cowboys to settle for a field goal.
Lamar Jackson then had seven seconds to work with and hit Zay Flowers for a huge gain to set up the game-winner, which Tyler Loop converted.
The red zone issue that had plagued Dallas last season reared its ugly head again, and while the unit was 3/5 in Rio, that last one will sting the most for guard Tyler Booker.
“That's something that we've been focusing on all offseason, one of our corrections going into this year was be better in the red zone,” Booker said. “We got to score touchdowns in the red zone. We had the opportunity to score a touchdown in the red zone earlier on, we didn't.
"Then we had the opportunity on the two-yard line, and we had a false start, we're not pointing fingers at anybody, but that's just somewhere where we all have to be better."
Perhaps the most baffling aspect is that Dallas ran the ball well with Javonte Williams (98 yards, 1 TD), yet he didn't get a single carry when the offense was at the two-yard line.
For whatever reason, the Cowboys threw it, and with Schoonmaker's false start the drive killer, Booker knows how pivotal that play was, but it wasn't the reason Dallas lost.
“That’s where we all have to grow because that definitely could have changed the outcome of the game," Booker added. "But I don't like to play with hypotheticals. So, we just got to be better and make sure that we're not having penalties in the red zone.
"But there's a lot of things. It didn't come down to that one play. We had a lot of opportunities to create a bigger lead in that game to prevent the outcome that we had.”
QB Dak Prescott mentioned how if the team is going to call itself "GOTI'' ("Greatest Offense There Is'') it's got to "punch it in'' from in close.
So maybe they should quit calling themselves that?
Anyway ...
Booker is right, Dallas did shoot itself in the foot so many times in Rio, but that last flag, that was a backbreaker.
Going from the two-yard line to the seven to make it a second-and-seven took a Williams run out of the equation, and in the end, Dallas was forced to settle for a field goal.
Had a touchdown been scored, no doubt the Cowboys would have won, and the outlook for the rest of the season would be drastically different.
