The Dallas Cowboys were handed their first significant blow of the season last Sunday in a 30-16 loss at home to the Denver Broncos.
Despite the return of Dak Prescott to the starting lineup, the Cowboys offense was a no-show against Denver. Dallas failed to score until just over four minutes remained in the contest and the Cowboys trailed 30-0. Jerry Jones said the Cowboys were “as flat as any team I’ve seen.”
Broncos head coach Vic Fangio said that opponents hadn’t played the Cowboys the right way, implying that Denver had the answer to the Dallas problem.
In an interview with 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Cowboys receiver Amari Cooper didn’t agree with that notion and had a different take on why Dallas was not competitive against the Broncos.
“So, here’s the thing,” Cooper said. “We give Denver full credit for coming out there and competing the way they competed. The crazy thing is we knew they would try to stop the run and play man on the outside and kind of do whatever they had to do to stop the run.
“But you got to think: me and CeeDee (Lamb)’s ankle was like — he had just hurt it on Wednesday. He could barely run. The same thing with me, you know what I’m saying. So, it’s kind of funny because we invite that. As time goes on, we invite that. That’s what we want. It just caught us on a bad week. I’m not trying to make excuses. Shoot, I could barely run, he could barely run, and we’re starting receivers. So it’s easy to cover two guys who can’t really do what they want to do. No excuses. We still stepped on the field. So, obviously, we needed to do our jobs because we decided to step on the field. But, you know, we want to invite that man-to-man coverage every week because it’s either going to be a slow death or a fast one.”
Both Cooper and Lamb were questionable to play against Denver last week. Cooper was limited in practice all week due to his hamstring injury. Lamb was unable to practice on Thursday after tweaking his ankle.
Cooper doesn’t believe it’s anything that will carry over moving forward and that they’ll be able to put the dud against the Broncos behind them.
“No, I mean, listen, it’s a new week. It’s a new opponent,” Cooper said. “Obviously it’s going to be a tough to win again because this is the NFL. You just have to be on our P’s and Q’s, trust in our preparation, and go out there and play. We know what we have. We feel like we have a special group. We feel like we shouldn’t lose any games. So, I think with that confidence, just getting our swagger back for this week, I think we should be okay.”