Cowboys vs Ravens: Brian Schottenheimer leads a disaster-class loss

REUTERS/Brian Snyder | REUTERS

There are losses that happen because the other team is simply better. Then there are losses where a team spends the final few minutes handing its opponent every opportunity to survive. Sunday’s 34-31 loss to the Baltimore Ravens in Brazil felt like the latter.

The Cowboys had the ball at the Baltimore two-yard line with 23 seconds remaining, a timeout in their pocket and a chance to take the lead. They didn’t score a touchdown. 23 seconds later, the Ravens were celebrating after Tyler Loop drilled a 56-yard field goal at the gun.

Plenty went wrong before those final 23 seconds, however. Dallas committed seven penalties for 88 yards, went just 3-for-5 in the red zone and repeatedly found ways to turn promising situations into field goals or empty possessions.

Even head coach Brian Schottenheimer admitted afterward that some of the biggest mistakes were his. Asked to grade his performance as a play-caller, Schottenheimer gave himself an “F.”

The Cowboys had plenty of opportunities

It’s important to establish that Dallas did not get dominated Sunday. The Cowboys gained 415 yards to Baltimore’s 378, held the ball for 30:38 and produced 27 first downs. Dak Prescott threw for 276 yards, CeeDee Lamb had 112 receiving yards, and Javonte Williams ran for 98 yards as Dallas finally got its ground game moving.

This was a winnable football game. That’s precisely why the bone-headed mistakes the Cowboys regularly make matter. Dallas’ first possession reached the Baltimore 1-yard line, but instead of handing the ball to Williams after he had a productive drive, the Cowboys called two straight passes. The first fell incomplete. The second resulted in a 9-yard sack. A drive that could have produced seven points produced three.

Later, a holding penalty on Terence Steele wiped out a third-down conversion after a big George Pickens catch. The Cowboys eventually had the ensuing 59-yard field goal blocked, and Baltimore immediately drove for a touchdown.

These weren’t impossible problems to overcome. They were the kinds of problems good teams don’t make.

The play-calling

The Cowboys’ tendency to get cute showed up multiple times. Notably, when Jake Ferguson caught a shovel pass that ended in a fumble, another promising possession went nowhere. Dallas had Prescott playing efficiently, Lamb making plays, Pickens contributing, and Williams running the football effectively. The offense didn’t need to reinvent the wheel every time it reached the red zone or found an opportunity to extend a drive.

A coach has to understand his playbook, but a head coach also has to understand his personnel well enough to know when the situation calls for creativity and when it calls for trusting the players who have already established an advantage.

On Sunday, Schottenheimer didn’t always seem to make that distinction. It seemed like he was hedging between not fully trusting the offense that was on the field and having to be the smartest guy on the sidelines. Overthinking, overcoaching, overreacting.

Red-zone offense is still a huge question mark

The Cowboys finished 3-for-5 in the red zone, and the two failures were costly because both came in situations where Dallas had a realistic opportunity to take control of the game. It felt like there were at least a dozen moments in this game where that could have happened, but pinpointing these two would-be opportunities highlights the shortcomings.

The most consequential sequence came at the end of the game and Dallas at Baltimore’s 22-yard line. A pass interference penalty on Nate Wiggins moved the Cowboys to the two-yard line, giving Dallas first-and-goal with 23 seconds remaining and an opportunity to take the lead.

ESPN’s win probability put Dallas at 77.5% at that point. Four downs and a timeout separated the Cowboys from a potential touchdown. Instead, Prescott threw an incomplete pass to Pickens on first down. Then Luke Schoomaker’s false start pushed the Cowboys back five yards. Prescott scrambled for two yards on the next play before throwing the ball away on third down, leaving Brandon Aubrey to attempt a 23-yard field goal with seven seconds remaining.

Schottenheimer acknowledged that he had instructed Prescott to take the conservative approach on third down.

“I probably over-coached Dak on that one, because we had the points,” Schottenheimer said. “It had to go to GP or throw it away. That’s on me. I over-coached him.”

Prescott even admitted afterward that he probably should have held onto the ball longer and left it near the front pylon. That exchange tells you a lot about what went wrong. Schottenheimer was trying to eliminate the possibility of a negative play, but in doing so he also eliminated the opportunity to do what he is paid to do. Win the game. Rather than trusting his quarterback to make the best decision with the game on the line, Schotty attempted to script the outcome too tightly.

That is not necessarily a problem on its own. But when combined with the earlier goal-line decisions, the shovel pass and the Cowboys’ repeated tendency to move away from what was working, it begins to look less like an isolated decision and more like a coach struggling to trust his own offense.

Lack of urgency

People typically mix urgency in football with speed and tempo. That isn’t wrong, but I think a coach like Schottenheimer fails to realize it also means not taking a play for granted.  After Aubrey tied the game with seven seconds to go before overtime, the Cowboys avoided the risk of a long return by kicking the touchback, even though they could have burned valuable seconds off the clock.

Now to the last offensive play. There is plenty to discuss about the defensive call on that final play, and that responsibility ultimately falls more directly on defensive coordinator Christian Parker. Schottenheimer explained afterward that he liked the defensive call because he wanted the Cowboys to remain aggressive and “sticky” in coverage, which they weren’t, giving up a 27-yard pass to a wide-open Zay Flowers. Tyler Loop then banged home the game-winner.

As the head coach, Schottenheimer owns the larger sequence. The Cowboys had just tied the game with seven seconds remaining. Instead of forcing Baltimore to return the kick before attempting a desperation pass, Dallas kicked the ball into the end zone for a touchback, allowing the Ravens to start at their own 35-yard line with all seven seconds remaining.

Jackson then needed only one completion to put Baltimore in range. The decision may have made sense within the defensive philosophy the Cowboys had in mind, but in practice and in hindsight, it was foolish.

Still, the result was another example of a game where the Cowboys had a chance to control the situation and instead let the opponent dictate it. It really felt like the Cowboys thought the Ravens would just take this game into overtime. If they kept everything in front of them and didn’t give up a touchdown, they’d head to OT with a fresh start. They reckoned there was no way the Ravens would play to win.

What now?

The Cowboys did not lose because their offense was incapable of moving the football, or because the defense couldn’t get stops; they had a few. They lost because the team repeatedly struggled to turn that production and those stops into the situational execution that closes games.

Schottenheimer must figure out what his offense does best and trust it when the game demands it. If Williams is running effectively, Dallas needs to stay with him. If Lamb and Pickens are winning their matchups, stick with them. The offense should not feel compelled to manufacture something simply because the defense might be expecting the obvious answer.

When Prescott has the ball with the game on the line, the coaching staff has to give him just the right amount of guidance to succeed without taking away the instincts that have made him one of the league’s more productive quarterbacks.

Schottenheimer deserves credit for admitting that Sunday’s performance fell short of his own standard. But accountability only matters if the same mistakes do not keep appearing in the next close game; go ask Green Bay fans about Matt LeFleur.

For a Cowboys team that has spent years finding new ways to lose games, it had opportunities to win against a team that has historically owned them. Schottenheimer now must prove that Sunday’s disaster was a lesson rather than another chapter in the same story.