Dallas City News

The Dallas Cowboys took care of business on Sunday against the Cleveland Browns and began the season on a proper note. 1-0 feels good.

It was an interesting game in that the offense was hardly on fire but the team scored 33 points. Sometimes that is just the way football goes. It is a team game, as is often said.

Something I will be doing every week this season is taking a look at weird/interesting instances or phenomenon like this. Thanks to our friends at Stathead the random happenstances that occur in NFL games are easy to look up, even though there are so many games and moments in the history of the league to sort through.

All of the results come from them and are based on or around the game that we will have just seen from the Cowboys. In this particular instance we are obviously coming off of the season opener against the Cleveland Browns.

Here we go.

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Dak Prescott’s low output, relatively speaking

Dak Prescott “only” threw for 179 yards which feels low for how we know quarterback production to be these days. In spite of this feeling the Cowboys still scored 33 points as a team en route to victory. This was actually the second year in a row in which Prescott threw for fewer than 180 yards while the Cowboys won and did so rather handily, if I may add, in their season opener. Last year it was during the 40-0 win against the New York Giants.

A smaller workload for Ezekiel Elliott

Ezekiel Elliott carried the ball 10 times on Sunday, a low mark for him as far as the utilization that we have come to know over the course of the last almost-decade. This was only the second time that Dallas won a game in which he had 10 or fewer carries, the other being Week 16 against Washington in 2021.

A punt return for a touchdown in Week 1!

KaVontae Turpin returned a punt for a touchdown in Cleveland, his first touchdown return since joining the Cowboys. It was the team’s 30th overall punt return in franchise history and the first since Ryan Switzer did it during the 2017 season. Interestingly this was only the second time ever that Dallas had a punt return for a touchdown in Week 1. The other instance was Kelvin Martin in 1992.

Imagine a game with a punt return and six sacks to go with it

What’s more is that the Cowboys also saw incredible defensive production on top of scoring on special teams. Dallas totaled six sacks. Only once in franchise history has the team had at least six sacks and a punt return for a touchdown in a single game. It was Week 13 of 1968 against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Eric Kendricks was a man on a mission

In terms of individual defensive achievements, Eric Kendricks stood out in his debut with the team. He had two sacks and an interception on the day (Micah Parsons provided the assist for the interception) which is a pretty rare thing to happen to a single player in one game. This was actually the third time in franchise history that a player had two sacks and an interception in one game. The other two may surprise you.

Brandin Cooks is officially on a streak

Brandin Cooks caught the first touchdown of the season for the Cowboys and scored for the fourth consecutive regular-season game. A streak of five or more games with a touchdown has only occurred eight times before in franchise history. Cooks will have the opportunity to get there on Sunday against the team who originally drafted him in the New Orleans Saints.

Low total yards, lots of points, a win is a win

To finish where we started, the Cowboys as a team only generated 265 total yards on Sunday and still scored 33 total points (obviously the punt return helped). This was only the seventh time ever that the team scored at least 33 points while having 265 total yards or less, all in a winning effort. As previously noted, the last time this happened was Week 1 of last year. These kinds of games are pretty rare, though.