Rich’s Advice to the Cowboys in the Wake of Their Last-Second Week 3 Loss to the Ravens

Ravens-Cowboys produced something the Super Bowl era had never seen: both teams scoring in the final 10 seconds of regulation. TJ Jefferson guessed the number of previous examples correctly. Zero.

Chris Brockman called it the best international series game ever, and Rich ruled that not an overreaction. But the question hanging over the finish has nothing to do with history. Why did the Cowboys settle for three when they had a shot at six?

The sequence that followed made it worse. Dallas kicked deep instead of squibbing it, the Ravens hit a massive chunk play over the middle to Zay Flowers, and Baltimore answered the Cowboys' field goal with one of its own at the gun.

Before all that, with ticks left on the doorstep, Dak Prescott had George Pickens in a one-on-one look and, as Rich put it, "airmailed it all the way to Argentina." Asked about it afterward, Prescott said he was throwing it away and didn't want to get into his thought process "definitely not right now." Shown that Pickens looked open, he conceded the point. "Yeah, he probably was," Prescott said. "I probably should have just sat on it a little bit longer."

Then Brian Schottenheimer explained that Prescott would have been going rogue. "We called a quick out," Schottenheimer said. "I probably over coached Dak on that one, you know, cuz we had the points." With the time and no timeouts, he said, it had to go to Pickens or be thrown away.

Rich likes Schottenheimer. He has been caping for him and praised his emotional intelligence. That is exactly why this one stung. "That's now twice that this coach has made a decision that wasn't aggressive enough," Rich said.

The first, he reminded everyone, came on the opening drive of the season at MetLife: fourth and inches, deep in their own end, and the Cowboys punted. Rich compared that logic to refusing to go all in on the first hand of poker night. Sure, you might lose. "But you could also double up."

As for Prescott, Rich sees a quarterback protecting his coach. The keyboard warriors lit up a "$60 million-a-year quarterback" for not giving his "$30 million wide receiver" a shot. But in Rich's telling, Prescott was told to airmail it, and he is "too good a soldier to go rogue and also call his coach out." So he eats it, says he threw the ball away, and saves the real conversation for later in the week.

The kickoff drew its own scrutiny in studio. Why not kick it through the end zone and take no time off? The answer, as Rich framed it, was that the Cowboys didn't want to risk losing on a return, which only added to the pile. "There's a lot of non-aggressive plays here," he said. The reply from across the table was shorter: "Scared money don't make money."

Rich has seen this movie from the stands. His own Michigan team lost to Iowa the same weekend. Kirk Ferentz played not to lose with a field goal try, the kick missed, and Michigan took that gift by running the ball three straight times rather than throwing once. Then the defense went back on the field, essentially daring Iowa to go 91 yards to win it. Michigan lost. "That's what ends up happening when you play not to lose," Rich said.

The season is not over. Dallas is 1-2, the offense is "pretty damn good," and the defense, while it did enough, gave up the big play at the end "when everybody knew what they were going to try to attempt."

Rich's prescription for Schottenheimer is simple. "Pedal to the metal from here on out." Damn the torpedoes, he said, or the Cowboys will wind up being "period, end of story."