Thursday night's game between Dallas and New Orleans might have been one of the great games of this regular season.
The final score was merely 13-10 Dallas. A couple of weeks ago, the Rams and Chiefs both doubled the combined points scored in this game on their own. But this felt much more like a real man's football game. It was a real test of brute strength, manning up and simply being more physical than the guy lined up across you. These games are so few and far between anymore. But I sure expect more games to echo this feel come the final weeks of the season and the playoffs.
I say it might have been one of the best, but bizarre and, quite frankly, terrible penalties in the second half marred the flow of the game. Unlike a lot of penalty-ridden games, though, I don't think the penalties affected the outcome of this one, but it did lessen the lasting impression a bit.
A couple of coaching miscalculations by Sean Payton proved costly, too. Cole Beasley's third-down conversion late in the game was a huge play because he clearly was down before getting the first down, but because Sean Payton was out of challenges, the first down stuck. Ezekiel Elliot proceeded to rip the longest run of the night on the ensuing play, and that really spelled doom for the Saints. Payton is usually aggressive, but he still should've sensed the need to kick a field goal early in the game down 13-0; instead, he went for it on fourth down, and Alvin Kamara came up just short.
The worst decision, though, was when he called timeout before the two-minute warning. With one timeout left, the Cowboys ran it on first down. Payton called a timeout at the 2:03 mark. Normally calling a timeout in front of the two-minute warning dares the team to throw it with the chance of an incompletion coming before 2:00, but with only three seconds before that, the Cowboys had no reason not to take a shot in the end zone. They did, and the Saints were called for pass interference (a call that would not have been made had this been a playoff game, by the way. Believe me, I've seen it). That call allowed the Cowboys to run out the clock.
If there is a rematch between these two in January, it likely would be in New Orleans. I have to think the Saints win that one. They just weren't themselves on this night. I'd say it was because it was a Thursday game, but both teams played a week ago on Thanksgiving. The Saints were just flat. Their playcalling was a little vanilla, relatively speaking. Brees did face some pressure, but usually he's decisive enough to hit his checkdowns with pace and accuracy; in this one, he was skiddish. He freaked out and threw a pass in the flat without truly finding where his running back (Kamara) was on the field.
But credit the Cowboys' defense. They absolutely dominated all three levels on the field. Their defensive line was stout. Their linebackers cover so much ground going sideline to sideline, that it allows their secondary a little more help in coverage. The Saints receivers didn't get a lot of separation against a press coverage scheme, and because there was more help over the top, the Saints needed more time to get open, which allowed the Cowboys' rush to get to Brees.
There was so much going on in that defensive effort that a lot of fans aren't going to appreciate. Most fans will look at a 13-10 game and think it was boring. It was far from it. This was a rare case when the defensive synergy was spectacular. What seems to pass as good defense is when a team comes up with a big turnover despite allowing 400-plus yards throughout the night. No, this was a true defensive gem.
Perhaps the second-biggest winner of the game was the LA Rams, who now have a chance to claim the No. 1 seed. Their only loss was to the Saints, and that was on the road. I don't foresee them topping the Saints at their place in the playoffs either, but if they do face them again in the championship game, I'd pick them if the game was played in LA.
Notes:
-I watched this game through my Amazon account. It was as high-quality a picture as I've seen. No signs of slowdown or picture issues.
-I got decent points from Zeke in one Fantasy league, but less-than-stellar points from Kamara and Cooper in my other league. Oh well. Thankfully this wasn't the first round of the playoffs.