Cowboys ‘1,000 Percent’ Thought They’d Beaten Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers snatched defeat from the jaws of victory last week at Cleveland. On Sunday night at the Dallas Cowboys, horrendous clock management almost had the Packers snatching defeat from the jaws of a tie.

Trailing 40-37 in overtime, Jordan Love marched the Packers into the red zone. On first-and-10 from the Dallas 12, Love threw a receiver screen to Matthew Golden. Savion Williams didn’t block Trevon Diggs, who crushed Golden for a loss of 3.

The Packers called their final timeout with 28 seconds remaining.

What happened next was almost straight from the Matt Eberflus School of Clock Mismanagement.

Last year, when Eberflus was head coach of the Bears, his team had a chance to take the Lions to overtime. Instead, rather than calling his last timeout, the last 30 seconds melted away as Caleb Williams tried to get the offense organized. Finally, the ball was snapped and time expired as his pass fell incomplete.

The mistake cost Eberflus his job.

On Sunday night, a similar bungling of the clock almost cost the Packers in the standings.

With Green Bay in position to steal a win, Love’s throw into the flat was caught by Emanuel Wilson. The result was a loss of 1, with Wilson tackled by Eberflus’ Cowboys defense with 22 seconds to go. On third-and-14 and with the clock ticking away, the Packers showed practically no urgency. Players jogged back to the line of scrimmage. Tucker Kraft lined up about 2 yards offside before moving back.

Finally, Love got the snap with about 6 seconds to go. His pass to Matthew Golden was incomplete.

One second was on the clock.

“1,000 percent,” Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said of thinking time had expired. “I thought just the way they got up to the line, I don’t want to say without urgency, because there was some. But then I realized that they’re not spiking it and they’re going to take an opportunity at the end zone. He didn’t get it out immediately and the ball hung, especially when it went off [Jack] Sanborn’s back. I thought it was going to hit zero for sure.”

That allowed Brandon McManus to kick the game-tying field goal.

“I wouldn’t say it’s satisfying, but it’s not a loss. It’s not a tick in the loss column,” McManus said. “Who knows down the road when we’re at the end if it helps us or hurts us? It was an interesting game, all in all, from the start to the end.”

Interesting – especially at the end.

How did the Packers go from 22 seconds to 1?

“That just goes to the level of detail, where we’re not where we need to be,” coach Matt LaFleur said. “There’s 28 seconds left. We call a play, take a shot to the end zone. They play Cover-2 (and) we end up checking the ball down, so we have an on-the-ball call to send everybody to the end zone.

“We knew that – we use the term Ozone – saying that it’s got to go out of bounds or end zone. Obviously, the time remaining, and the operation was just way too slow. I don’t know if our guys didn’t know we were in 2-minute or what. Ultimately the communication’s got to get better, myself to Jordan, Jordan to the huddle. That’s the bottom line.”

Love acknowledged his team was fortunate to not beat itself for a second consecutive week.

“No timeouts left, we’ve got to get a call in and we had a good call on and we just didn’t execute,” he said. “I don’t think everybody was on the same page with what needed to happen. It’s something that we’ve got to fix, we’ve got to clean up and be better because it ended up being really, really close with only 1 second left.”

The clock mismanagement at the end of overtime might not have been necessary had the Packers not botched the end of the first half.

The Packers should have been ahead 14-0 early in the second quarter. Instead, late in the first half, they were clinging to a 13-9 lead. LaFleur tried to quickly push into field-goal range at the end of the half. Instead, Love was sacked and stripped, and the Cowboys turned that into a touchdown to lead 16-13 at intermission.

“I always like being aggressive,” Love said. “I think if we hit a big chunk right there, we’d have time to get up and clock it and get in field-goal range. I think we had a couple opps. We had one to Rome [Romeo Doubs] I missed, but we had a couple chances to get some big plays and it’s just unfortunate it happened the way it did.

“They’re good as well. They made a really good play right there being able to get a strip/sack. I would never say that I just want to take it to the half. I think if we’ve got time, definitely try to be aggressive and finish with a kick or something.”

With that, the Packers will enter their bye week with a 2-1-1 record – certainly not a bad record, but a disappointment when it looked like 4-0 was a real possibility with the Packers big favorites in both games.

“I think there’s just little small details on a handful of plays,” Love said. “We’ll go back and watch it on film but there’s those small details where, in the grand scheme of a game, those are the things that it comes down to, those things that can win you a game or lose you a game.”

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