When the Eagles opened Sunday’s game in Dallas with three touchdowns on their first three possessions, it seemed like they were on their way to their ninth win of the season.
As it turned out, though, the 21-0 lead was fool’s gold. The Eagles would give up a touchdown just before halftime and pick up one first down over their next five possessions before missing a field goal early in the fourth quarter. The Cowboys would tie the game on their next possession and go on to win 24-21 on a field goal at the end of a wild fourth quarter.
The Eagles turned the ball over twice in the final quarter and they committed 14 penalties over the course of the game, which were the kinds of errors that quarterback Jalen Hurts said the team has to address in the wake of their stunning meltdown.
“You look inward first,” Hurts said in his postgame press conference. “Looking at the things we can control from a penalty standpoint, an execution standpoint, those are all things we control. I don’t point towards how we adjusted or what we did or didn’t do. In the end, we had an opportunity to win the game and we didn’t. We’ve got to own this one, let it light a fire in us as a team and stay together and move forward.”
Sunday’s collapse stands out, but the Eagles’ offensive inconsistency has been a season-long issue and urgency to fix it was already high. They’ll have a quick turnaround to Friday’s game against the Bears and keeping the Cowboys loss from carrying over into that contest will join the offensive questions as top priorities in Philly this week.
The Cowboys got a steal in George Pickens, sending only a 2026 third-round pick and a 2027 fifth-round pick to Pittsburgh for Pickens and a 2027 sixth-round pick. They are paying him only $3.656 million this season.
The wide receiver had nine catches for 146 yards and a touchdown in Sunday’s comeback win over the Eagles, giving him 18 receptions for 290 yards and two touchdowns the past two weeks.
“It’s hard for me to say exceeds my expectations,” Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said. “My expectations for him are limitless, and he’ll tell you that he’s not from here. I’m sure you have all read his article in The Players’ Tribune. He’s not from here. He’s not from this planet and so, I’m not going to put limitations on him. He went out there and did what he’s done in games when he has that opportunity, in practice as well.
“The guy loves the game. He stays focused. Just the communication, as I’ve said before, to other guys in the huddle about staying focused and keep doing what you’re doing. We lucked up with getting a guy like that. We have to make sure that we can keep him here. He’s a hell of a player turning into a leader, and he’s special.”
Pickens has had a better season than teammate CeeDee Lamb and just about any other wide receiver not named Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He already has a career-best 67 receptions and eight receiving touchdowns and is over 1,000 yards with 1,054.
“George has been such an integral part of our story, and he has his story to a degree that that’s our story,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. “I’m so proud for him. Everybody on this team is. And he certainly has absolutely been the difference as we’ve played over the last two weeks. . . . It’s something when you’ve got 88 [Lamb] and Pick.”
Pickens, though, is scheduled to become a free agent in March.
He has earned a top-of-the-market contract, which begs the question of whether the Cowboys will be able to afford him. They are projected to be $60.2 million over the 2026 salary cap, according to overthecap.com.
The Cowboys could use the franchise tag on Pickens, which is expected to be $28 million for one season. It’s a move that would not sit well with Pickens.
“Of course, [we want to keep Pickens]. Of course, we are proud to have him, and I don’t even want to play games with him,” Jones said. “We’d love to have him on the team. By the way, I’d love to have 88 [Lamb] on the team. And I know what we’re asking around here, but we sure like the way the combination is really letting us execute on offense.”
Nothing stops the Cowboys from signing Pickens to a deal now, a fact that was pointed out to Jones on Sunday night.
“I don’t just try to spend my day messing with agents as you well know,” Jones said, chuckling.
The Cowboys will wait, as they always do, before figuring out some way to keep him.
The NFL admitted a mistake on a roughing-the-kicker call on Ryan Flournoy, but they blamed the error on Fox for not providing a timely replay that showed a Cowboys special teamer tipping Braden Mann’s punt.
Ryan Flournoy was penalized 15 yards for hitting the Philadelphia punter’s plant leg. But he got a piece of the ball, which still traveled 40 yards, and that should have negated the penalty.
“When there is a flag thrown for roughing the punter, we clear the play to make sure that the ball wasn’t tipped,” Mark Butterworth, the NFL vice president of instant replay, told Todd Archer of ESPN in a pool report. “We can use replay assist to pick up the flag when we have clear and obvious video evidence that the player that committed the foul touched the ball prior to making contact with the punter.
“Also, more importantly, the defense can always challenge that the ball was tipped prior to contact. Now, what happened was, I think a play or two later, TV showed an enhanced shot, which they can do. We don’t have access to that enhanced shot until they show it. By then, it was too late. If we would have had that shot previously, we would have been able to assist prior to the ball being snapped.”
Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said the team didn’t see a clear shot of Flournoy’s touch of the punt either until later, though Flournoy insisted he had tipped it.
“We couldn’t get a good look at it, you know,” Schottenheimer said. “Flo was adamant about it. You listen; we listen to our players. I trust those guys completely. But again, they have to look at it. And so, again, sounds like we should have challenged it, but again, just part of the game, you know?”
The Eagles ended up driving for a touchdown and a 14-0 lead.
“For us to replay assist, we would need clear and obvious video evidence, which we didn’t have until, again, the broadcast partner sent an enhanced view. I think it was a play or two later,” Butterworth said. “Their enhanced shot showed that the ball was tipped prior to contact to the punter by the fouling player.”
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones understands exactly where his team stood entering Sunday’s game against the Eagles. Nine NFC teams had more wins than the Cowboys.
At 4-5-1 entering today, the Cowboys had no margin of error.
“This day had such meaning for our season. This day had such meaning for our future,” Jones said postgame. “Earlier this year we had a chance to go down a couple of roads, and we took one of the roads.”
Yet, they fell behind the Eagles 21-0 early, digging an even bigger hole. The Eagles were threatening to bury the Cowboys in their own stadium.
“I just didn’t believe that we were giving that much to them,” Jones said. “Everything we were doing, we were letting them have opportunity.”
The Cowboys never lost their will and found a way, scoring 24 unanswered points. They won on a 42-yard Brandon Aubrey field goal on the final play.
It tied for the biggest comeback in team history. Dallas now is 4-127 all-time, including the playoffs, when down by 21 points. The other 21-point comebacks were: a 34-31 win over the Rams on Sept. 21, 2014, a 41-35 win over Washington on Sept. 12, 1999 and a 30-27 win over the Saints on Oct. 21, 1984.
“You’ve got to have these little wins as you look [at the] daunting [schedule] ahead and our numbers of what we’re going to do to get in the playoffs,” Jones said. “But that’s one right there that I’ll be as proud of on my dying breath, as I will any game we’ve won around here.
“Well, I’m not going to say Super Bowls, but I can dream. I can dream.”
The Cowboys’ playoff hopes remained alive with a 24-21 victory over the Eagles on Sunday.
The Cowboys, who lost to the Eagles in the season opener, improved to 5-5-1, while Philadelphia dropped to 8-3.
The Eagles scored touchdowns on their first three drives and then did next to nothing the rest of the game. In their final seven possessions, not counting a kneel down to end the half, the Eagles punted five times, fumbled once and missed a 56-yard field goal. They gained only 107 yards in those seven possessions after picking up 192 on their first three.
The Eagles had 14 penalties for 96 yards, two turnovers and went 5-for-12 on third down for the game.
Their missteps and offensive inefficiency the final three quarters allowed Dallas to rally from down 21-0 to tie it.
The performance is tied for the biggest comeback in Cowboys franchise history, with this being the fourth time it’s happened.
The Cowboys had a prime opportunity for their first lead with 5:09 left when Xavier Gipson, for some reason, fielded a punt at his own 2. He ran it back to the 12, where he was crushed by Markquese Bell and Alijah Clark, knocking the ball loose. Trent Sieg recovered for Dallas.
That gave the Cowboys first-and-goal at the 8. They got nothing out of it.
Javonte Williams ran for 6 and Dak Prescott for 1, setting up third-and-goal from the 1. Prescott twice threw incomplete passes, including a ball that hit CeeDee Lamb in the stomach on third down.
Alas, the Cowboys got the ball back and cashed in, driving 49 yards in eight plays to set up Brandon Aubrey’s 42-yard field goal on the final play.
Dak Prescott, who became the team’s career passing yards leader on Sunday, went 23-of-36 for 354 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. He also rushed twice, scoring an 8-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter. George Pickens caught nine passes for 146 yards and a touchdown, and CeeDee Lamb added four receptions for 75 yards.
Javonte Williams ran for 87 yards on 20 carries.
Jalen Hurts was 27-of-39 for 289 yards with a touchdown and ran for 33 yards on seven carries. Saquon Barkley had 10 carries for 22 yards and seven catches for 52 yards and a lost fumble. A.J. Brown caught eight passes for 110 yards and a touchdown.
