Week 16 of the 2016 National Football League schedule concludes with a Monday night match-up of epic importance when the Detroit Lions take on the Dallas Cowboys from AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas.
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The Lions (9-6) were the team trying to lock up a playoff berth, but they couldn’t keep up after halftime with Dallas (13-2), which had all of its stars on display. Bryant then pulled up and lobbed a pass to tight end Jason Witten for an easy 10-yard score and a 35-21 lead.
But Prescott found Bryant with a 25-yard touchdown pass before the interval – the first of four unanswered Cowboys touchdowns to end the game. Ezekiel Elliott broke a 55-yard run for a touchdown a few plays into the drive. To put this into perspective, the Cowboys were on pace for 624 yards at the completion of the first quarter. We’ve just got to come together and get better this week and go play the next one. There’s risk to that approach, as the Cowboys have unsafe weapons in the passing game and Prescott is coming off one of his best performances of the season. Dallas goes up 7-0.
The Lions game was a flawless example. That left them with only Irving, Mayowa, Jack Crawford, Maliek Collins, and Randy Gregory, just returned to action from his suspension, to play the line. The Cowboys, meanwhile, had eight enforced penalties for 47 yards.
Thanks to an MVP caliber performance from Dak Prescott, the Cowboys were able to knock off the Lions.
“We get it at our place and a chance to win the division”, Stafford said of next week’s Packers game. Under heavy pressure from cornerback Johnson Bademosi, who would have been penalised for pass interference, Bryant reeled in the ball with one hand, before securing it as he hit the ground.
The first one to Bryant was one-handed grab with his left hand in the left corner of the end zone with a defensive back draped all over him. Over that time, the Cowboys have accumulated thirteen sacks.
The name Matthew Stafford is synonymous with Lions football, but the Detroit quarterback actually grew up in Dallas, Texas. Here’s how the first six drives of the game looked like: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, punt, touchdown.
For their penultimate regular season game, tonight vs. the Lions at AT&T in Arlington, that fact won’t affect their strategy. Erik Kramer threw for 341 yards and three touchdowns in the game, the Lions’ only playoff win of the Super Bowl era. “Moved around enough in the pass game, we just, we didn’t have any big plays”. They will host the visiting Detroit Lions, who now lead the NFC North.
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In Dallas, the game garnered a combined 34.9 rating (8.9 on ESPN and 26.0 on WFAA) while in Detroit, the game received a 29.5 rating (11.2 on ESPN, 18.3 on WXYZ).
