DENVER, CO – The Dallas Cowboys came up short to the Denver Broncos in their preseason opener on Saturday night 17-7. Penalties were the no. 1 issue for Dallas in tonight’s game. They had 17 penalties giving up 119 yards while Denver gave up just 15 yards.
Dallas avoided a shutout in the fourth quarter when QB Ben DiNucci found Simi Fehoko in the final minutes of the game. The offense looked unimpressive and what we expected out of Jalen Tolbert is not what we received. Tolbert had two catches for 10 yards for the game.
““I got to do everything better…I’m going to watch the film and go back to the lab…I’ve got to get better.”, Tolbert told us post-game.
“I really look at tonight and Thursday as a combination. I think the work coming up here is exactly what we need, particularly for our young players. We had a focus coming into the game to run the football and stop the run. With the amount of padded work you get in training camp in this structure, I thought we did some good things here.” Head Coach Mike McCarthy told us.
The young guys did get into some work last night. Tyler Smith started at LG and participated in 33 offensive plays while McGovern (his competition) played at right guard. The rookie first round pick had two holding penalties and missed a block which led to QB Cooper Rush getting sacked. Nothing to be extremely worried about. He looked solid and strong the entire game. The two penalties come from inexperience in the NFL and he will get better with more game-time reps.
“That was just learning. It was the first preseason game. There was a lot going on and a lot we honed in on. Physicality was definitely a big focus for me from the onset. I’m still learning and we’re getting better every day. I’ll definitely improve.” Smith said.
The biggest issue in this game was the penalties and that’s the most obvious reason as to why they lost this game. Last season the Cowboys were the most penalized team in the league and that was something they expressed great concern during the offseason and something they were really going to work on. Well, it didn’t work out so well in the first game. Dallas had 17 total penalties and gave up 119 total yards in penalties to the Broncos. The Penalties were all over the place, you couldn’t go three minutes without seeing a yellow flag thrown.
“I think discipline is the thing you’re working on all the time, pre-snap. I think we came out of Thursday, new cadence, they got us on some cadence things Thursday but I thought we did a better job of that today. We’ve got to go back and look at the combative ones, those are the ones we can control, particularly the holding on run plays.” McCarthy said post-game.
Dallas will head to Los Angeles for their second preseason game of the year against the Chargers next Saturday night.
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