Dallas Cowboys: Dak-less squad squeaks by with tough win

The Dallas Cowboys and those that support them came into Sunday night’s game on pins and needles. Not knowing, for what seems like the better part of a week, whether starting signal-caller, Dak Prescott, would go or not, it was at the mercy of how his pregame warmup session went.

Disappointingly enough, it was announced shortly before the game that he would not play. This meant that Cooper Rush would get his first start of his career.

A backup with the Cowboys for a while now, though with a little bit of other stuff in betwixt, he was familiar with Cowboys offensive coordinator, Kellen Moore, coming into the contest, as he was Moore’s back up for a while as the third guy on the depth chart.

At the end of the day, Rush wasn’t special, but he did enough and made enough plays for the Cowboys to win the game.

Dallas Cowboys were able to do enough to get the win and that’s all that matters

While Rush was on that side of the ledger, the officials continue to be on the opposite side. They did all they could to take the game away from the Cowboys. That’s an area where you(I) really try to stay away from, officiating, as every team deals with the same thing but on this night, it seemed like too much. As if it hasn’t seemed that way all season long, there was one possession that saw a sequence of head-scratching flags.

That’s made even more surprising when Vikings players and the defense, Anthony Barr in particular, had gotten away with similarly timed hits earlier in the contest. It’s really all befuddling. Either way though, the Cowboys were able to come through. For what it’s worth, Ezekiel Elliott had the biggest play of the game.

In the Cowboys’ final possession, he turned what would have been a play that came up short of a first for most backs, into a pinballing first-down and game-winning play for his Dallas Cowboys. That was all will, all hustle, all grit, all Zeke.

Trevon Diggs had his least-impressive outing of the year but still made a few plays as well. The rest of the much-scrutinized secondary did as well. On top of Diggs having a few less than stellar plays, he went out with a limp near the end of the contest and you hope all is well there. There are no grand takeaways from this one, other than they got the win and in a game without your quarterback, leader, and best player… that’ enough.