ARLINGTON, Texas — It was a bittersweet day for the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys beat the Redskins 47-16, the highest output for Dallas of the 2019 season. The team totaled 517 yards and could have beaten any team in the NFL with their dominant performance in week 17.
Players had more intensity than they have shown all season long. With the physicality Dallas showed up with in all phases, they were unstoppable. Michael Gallup had one of the best games of his career with three touchdowns and a 19.6 average after the catch. No.13 was explosive in the ballgame and made several acrobatic catches once again. On his third touchdown in the fourth quarter, Gallup cut inside on his route, left the corner behind him, and connected with Dak on a 45-yard pass/catch.
I spoke with Jason Garrett following the game on Gallup’s impact and he smiled, “ It was outstanding, to the point the officials were coming up to me asking is that the same guy? I said ‘yea.’ He makes a great play in the corner of the end zone, makes the acrobatic run after the catch in front of us to get in the end zone and the play at the end, when they played cover zero, fight for the contact and then make that play. He’s one of those guys that just goes about it the right way. He’s still a young player but gets better and better with every opportunity he gets. “
The message from Garrett last night to the team in preparation for the game against the Redskins was a message given to him by his former high school coach, Cliff Frost. The massage was for the players to “stand tall.”
Garrett remarked “so he coached me and coached me as hard as anyone has coached me in my life and the big thing was get back, get back, get back, stand tall, stand tall, stand tall. At the time I needed to get in the line of the scrimmage faster and better and probably played too low and he wanted me to stand up a little bit higher. It wasn’t until years later when I realized what he was talking about when he was saying stand tall. Stand tall through the successes in life, stand tall through the adversities in life and I got a great letter from him over the last 25 years. Good things were happening and maybe some challenging things were happening, and he always concluded the letter with stand tall, Coach. I shared that with our guys last night, and it challenged them to stand tall. Stand tall through successes in life and stand tall through the adversities. Get your shoulders back, get your eyes forward and go represent yourself the right way…. it was emotional, but so damn proud to be a part of this team.”
The players certainly rallied around their coach and stood tall against Washington. It was an emotional night for all the players and coaches as their disappointing season came to an end. After the inconsistent 8-8 season, the Cowboys no longer solely controlled their own destiny and the Eagles beat the Giants 34-17 and clinched the NFC East. Both Garrett and Dak Prescott’s contracts expire and the pair was emotional postgame behind the podium reminiscing on times with America’s team.
Dak teared up as he spoke on what both Garrett and Jason Witten mean to him. On being able to play with Witten again this season, he said, “ As I just said, the disappointing part is that you’ll never be able to play with some of these people again and we don’t know if that’s what it is for Witt, but he’s meant everything to me. Everything as a leader, someone I can look up to on the field, off the field. Somebody since I was a little boy who’s worn ‘the star’ the right way. I hope I can do that throughout my career.”
The team will look different next year with the likelihood of a new head coach and the forming of a new 53-man roster during the offseason. The season of 2019 has come and gone for Dallas. One of the most frustrating to date with the capability of the roster to beat any team on any given day when playing at their full potential but the Cowboys underperformed and will never have the same roster again.
