The Dallas Cowboys second-half comeback attempt fell short as quarterback Dak Prescott’s Hail Mary was intercepted as time expired dropping them to 5-4 with a 28-24 loss to Minnesota Vikings. Here are the four biggest takeaways from tonight’s game.
1. Kyle Rudolph
The Vikings tight end played a huge part in their win tonight abusing Cowboys linebacker Sean Lee in the red zone for two touchdowns and catching a crucial two-point conversion. On four catches he accounted for 14 points. He also helped open holes for running back Dalvin Cook to rush for 97 yards and one touchdown. Rudolph did more to impact this game then his stat line suggests.
2. Ezekiel Elliott
For the fourth week, I must say when Zeke is good life is good. That, however, was not the case tonight as his streak of 100-yard games came to an end as the Vikings held him to just 47 yards on 20 carries with a long of six yards. Any time you can force a team to become one dimensional you have a good chance of winning and that’s what the Vikings did tonight. For the Cowboys to have success moving forward they must find a way to get Elliott and the run game going because as we have seen the offense is at it’s best when there are balance and tonight there was none.
3. Amari Cooper
Let’s take a minute to appreciate Cooper. Battling multiple injuries he did everything in his power to help the Cowboys win. He had a team-high 11 catches for 147 yards and one touchdown helping open up things for fellow receiver Randall Cobb who had six catches for 106 yards and one touchdown along with Michael Gallup who had four catches for 76 yards and a score as well. This is one of the finner performances from this unit so far and with Cooper leading the way more games like this should be on the horizon.
4. Dak Prescott
Sure he had some bad passes and a couple of near intereceptions but he still nearly led two game winning drives with the first ending on a fourth down and the second on an interecpted Hail Mary. On a day where the ground game was nonexistent he went 28-of-46 for 397 yards and three touchdowns doing everything he could to lead the Cowboys to a win. With talk of him getting franchised tagged becoming more and more like a possibility games like this will only help validate that move.
