Dallas Cowboys ‘Nobody’s Underdog!’ Beat Rams; Another Upset, 4th Straight Win
It was a helluva quote.
It can become a helluva slogan.
"We're nobody's underdog!'' said Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy as his streaking team prepped for Sunday's Week 5 meeting at the Los Angeles Rams.
As I pointed out to him the following day at The Star, he was wrong in a literal sense; Dallas really was (much to McCarthy's shock) a five-point underdog here.
But he was right in another sense, as the Cowboys proved at SoFi on Sunday: Dallas, 22- 10 upset winner, is better than the defending Super Bowl champs.
The 4-1 Cowboys captured a fourth straight win - and a third upset win - using a now-familiar formula as they await the return (maybe this week) of QB Dak Prescott, rehabbing from thumb surgery.
The defense led here by DeMarcus Lawrence, Dorance Armstrong and a sore-bodied Micah Parsons (who had two of Dallas' five sacks) is merciless in attacking a foe’s weakness. and the Rams have a few of those in patchwork offensive line, a bad running game and battered QB Matthew Stafford, who entered the game having endured 16 sacks in four games …
And here - except for his 75-yard catch-and-run for a score by Cooper Kupp - was pulverized by Dallas, with Lawrence starting the scoring with a pick-6 and coordinator Dan Quinn's gang taking particular advantage in sending the Rams to 2-3.
And the Dak-less offense? It’s been clever in relying on temp QB Cooper Rush (a conservative 10 of 16 for 102 yards) to smartly utilize weapons like CeeDee Lamb and Ezekiel Elliott. ... and here, Tony Pollard, who entered the weekend with an illness but exited it with a spectacular 57-yard TD run.
McCarthy has jokingly suggested that he desires no credit for any of this, but at this still-early stage, the McCarthy “Hot-Seat Haters” look foolish.
There is no guarantee that this roll continues; the game at SoFi was conducted, as always, in “Cowboys Country,” as not even a Super Bowl has morphed fans of the silver and blue (or on this day, blue jerseys with white pants) into Rams lovers.
Indeed, next week comes an NFC East first-place showdown at Philadelphia, where the opponent will be better, the audience will be hateful and the “Nobody’s Underdog” Cowboys will once again be …
Underdogs.
At the same time, something else McCarthy said before the game also rings true, again in a literal sense.
“I was surprised by the (five-point point spread) because for a minute there, I thought we were favored by five,” he said, “That’s the way I think of our team. … We’re confident (we can) beat anybody on Sunday.”
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