Getty Image / Ronald Martinez
During the Cowboys 28-24 home loss to the Vikings on Sunday night Kirk Cousins hit Dalvin Cook on a screen pass that went for 30 yards in the first quarter.
No big deal, right? Cook is good in space and him stretching a screen out for 30 yards isn’t a surprise, but it turns out there was literally a bit of extra space on the field thanks to the Cowboys having just 10 players on the field.
Cook’s reception was the longest play the Vikings converted all night; it’s pretty safe to say Dallas being a man short certainly had something to do with that.
Longest play of game Sunday for Vikings came with 10 Cowboys defenders on field. RB Dalvin Cook gained 30 on screen, plus 14 more yards for Robert Quinn’s roughing the QB. Drive ended in TD. Dallas appeared to be missing a 3-tech DL, which Vander Esch signals (h/t @JohnOwning). pic.twitter.com/gRokbbKtHg
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) November 12, 2019
While having just 10 men on the field is damaging enough, on that same play Robert Quinn was called for roughing the passer. The Vikings went on to score just six plays later to take the early 14-0 lead.
Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, you know him as the man that is never and will never be on the hot seat, explained what happened during the play with Pro Football Talk.
“Yeah, didn’t do a good enough job getting our communication right, to have 11 out there,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said Wednesday. “Obviously, you want to have 11, and we didn’t handle the situation well enough.”
“Typically, [a timeout call] comes from the sidelines. In certain situations, players have taken timeouts,” Garrett said. “We just weren’t on top of it fast enough to see that and process the whole thing and get it called.”
In case you didn’t know before Garrett reminded us all with that quote, teams obviously want 11 players on the field at all times.
I think one of the more interesting takeaways from his explanation was his mention that ‘in certain situations, players have taken timeouts’ seemingly putting a bit of the blame on the players not recognizing the situation.
While he’s not wrong that the personnel on the field could have noticed they were a man short, there are also dozens of coaches in the pressbox seeing what’s going on down on the field and last time I checked, Garrett has eyes as well and he stands on the sideline.