The Dallas Cowboys were a single play away from facing the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship game last season. The infamous Dez Bryant catch that was eventually overturned in the divisional round against the Green Bay Packers ended a surprisingly good season for Jason Garrett's team.
The Cowboys, Seahawks and the weight of expectations
It was supposed to be a big season for the Cowboys and the Seahawks. Russell Wilson has zero protection, the Cowboys have backups starting at multiple positions and both teams have more questions than answers heading into Week 8.
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It was a deflating, disappointing loss but the Cowboys entered the offseason with confidence and a whole lot of momentum. They rocketed to the top of end-of-year power rankings, and when the 2015 season was just getting underway, the Cowboys were routinely placed in the top five of power rankings.
Garrett and Tony Romo drew fire from all sides before 2014, but now they had expectations. Big ones.
The Seahawks did end up playing in the NFC Championship, against the Packers team that benefited from the Bryant non-catch. They beat the Packers in overtime, with help from running back Marshawn Lynch and his 157 yards and some miscues from Green Bay. In the Super Bowl, with all the momentum on their side, the Seahawks faltered at the last minute and fell to the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
A crushing end to a brilliant season, but with young playmakers all over the roster and renewed hunger for another Super Bowl win, the Seahawks carried similar hype to the Cowboys throughout the season and into this one.
Things have not gone as planned for either team.
Injuries, lack of a running game hurt the Cowboys
Dallas is off to a 2-4 start to their season, dropping their last four games after winning the first two to start the season. Some of them have been close, like the narrow losses to the New Orleans Saints and New York Giants, while they never really had a chance against the Atlanta Falcons or New England Patriots.
The Cowboys sit at fourth place in the NFC East, potentially the weakest division in football through seven weeks of the season.
What's gone wrong? Well, to start, the Cowboys finished last season with DeMarco Murray, the NFL's leading rusher behind one of the most dominant offensive lines in the league. But they entered this season with Darren McFadden and Joseph Randle as the top running backs, and neither has been able to lead the Cowboys to the kind of start that Murray managed. Worse, they lost Tony Romo to a broken collar bone in Week 2 and Bryant broke a bone in his foot during the first game of the season.
The pressure wasn’t on Romo last season, he wasn’t consistently trying to bring the Cowboys back in games late. Instead, the Cowboys were closing things out by totally punishing opposing defenses with Murray until the clock hit zero. As you can see in the chart above, the Cowboys put up a whole lot more yardage on the ground through six games last year than they did this year.
The gap would be even bigger if you just made it five games, as the Cowboys had a field day against the New York Giants with over more than 200 yards rushing in their last game.
But what about the passing yardage? Those numbers are almost equal, and it’s easy to see why: it’s not actually performing that well this season, because Romo wasn’t asked to do as much as he could have with Murray running so well. This year, Romo’s backups aren’t playing as well as he did last season, and the Cowboys are sunk because the running game hasn’t been there most of the time.
Still, it's tough to win with Brandon Weeden and now Matt Cassel playing quarterback. The Cowboys lost all four games that Romo hasn't started this season. The team is 77-48 when Romo starts and 6-13 when he doesn't. Then there's the injury to Bryant. Cowboys receivers have just 38 total catches in the five games Bryant has been absent, while last year Bryant put up 32 receptions in the same time frame.
Seahawks can’t close out games
The Seahawks have led every single game in the fourth quarter this season. Every single game. But they sit at 3-4 on the season, blowing fourth quarter leads against the St. Louis Rams, Green Bay Packers, Cincinnati Bengals and Carolina Panthers. They were practically in a free-fall after getting taken down by the latter two teams, teams that remain undefeated on the season.
Fortunately for the Seahawks, they took on the San Francisco 49ers in their recent outing and beat them, 20-3. They're now 3-4 on the season, owning wins over bad teams like the 49ers, Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. They have lost to every good team they've played.
Seattle's defense has been fine this season, but the offense is lagging. Quarterback Russell Wilson isn't quite as effective this season. He's making more mistakes than usual, though his stat line through seven games isn't actually too different from him line over the same time a season ago, save for one big difference:
| Year | Completions | Yards | YPA | TD/INT | Sacked | QBR |
| 2014 | 135/207 (65.2 percent) | 1,490 | 7.20 | 11/3 | 15 | 66.4 |
| 2015 | 142/204 (69.6 percent) | 1,668 | 8.18 | 8/5 | 31 | 64.4 |
As noted above, Wilson’s stats are very similar. He’s thrown more interceptions and fewer touchdowns though, and that has a lot to do with the next big difference: the times he’s been sacked. Through seven games last season, he was brought down just 15 times, but the Seahawks’ shoddy offensive line has allowed him to go down a massive 31 times this season.
He has been sacked more than any quarterback in the league and frankly, it’s miraculous he’s only thrown five interceptions and has even managed eight touchdowns. He’s not working with the best group of receivers in the league and Marshawn Lynch hasn’t been 100 percent healthy for much of the season. Still, he’s managed to at least keep the Seahawks competitive. He should be given a medal.
Where do these teams go from here?
Well, first there is the matter of their head-to-head matchup on Sunday. The Seahawks will travel to Arlington to face the Cowboys on Sunday afternoon and while many favor the Seahawks, neither team has shown much to give anybody real confidence in them going forward.
On a basic level sure, the Seahawks seem less likely to blow a fourth-quarter lead against a Cassel-led Cowboys team than a Cam Newton-led Panthers team, but anything is possible when you’re a team that has allowed six sacks in a game more than once already this year.
Despite the early struggles, a playoff berth is not out of reach for either team. The Seahawks trail both the Cardinals and the Rams in the NFC West, but both teams have looked very beatable at times this year, and they're only back by a couple games. The Cowboys are at the bottom of the NFC East, but that division isn't good at all, with the struggling New York Giants on top at 4-3 and Romo eligible to return as soon as Week 11.
The Seahawks needs to clean up the offensive line play and give the defense some help late in games. The Cowboys have to somehow manage to put an offense together with Matt Cassel and Darren McFadden leading the way.
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