LANDOVER, Md. – This game was tied 3-3 at halftime. The score was 13-9 at the six-minute mark of the fourth quarter.
To use an analogy, there's probably a lot of people who are somewhat sober around midnight or 1 a.m.
But it's the last hour – and in this case, the last five minutes – that can turn the most normal situation upside down.
Make no mistake, this Cowboys-Commanders game was downright drunk.
Are you serious? Five touchdowns in the final five minutes? Two kickoff returns for touchdowns, including KaVontae Turpin's fumbled kickoff, slow jog to the middle, then a burst, a spin, more burst and a touchdown that might go down as one of the greatest special teams plays in team history.
And to think, we weren't even done with the dramatics.
The first 55 minutes were like an old-school, NFC East game that had more mistakes than big plays. The final five minutes were something you'd see at Wimbledon, with the back-and-forth volleys that probably gave everyone in the stadium a sore neck.
Let me just say this before we get too far down into this game, I get asked a lot, mostly on the daily podcast Cowboys StoryLine, about my favorite game of all-time. I always bring up my first game to cover the team in 1999, when the Cowboys rallied from 21 down in the fourth quarter to beat Washington in Week 1. It had Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman and Rocket Ismail making huge plays. It just will never get better than that one because it was the first one.
Well, right now, as I sit here trying to catch my breath, I'm going to say this last game against Washington is a close No. 2.
Now, who knows, in 25 years it's unlikely names such as Cooper Rush, Turpin, Josh Butler, Luke Schoonmaker and Chauncey Golston will be used like the ones I just spouted off. But I can promise you, we won't find another game that had this many back-and-forth plays in the final five minutes like that.
What's funny is that I saw on Twitter the first comment that was sent to me was how lucky the Cowboys were that Washington missed that extra point.
Well, I'll say this in return … the Cowboys have been called a lot of things in the last few weeks, and "lucky" certainly hasn't been one of them.
So Commanders kicker Austin Seibert missed a crucial kick to tie the game. Well, he missed another one in the third quarter that likely played a factor in the second one. You know, these kickers have a lot of thinking to do. Once things creep into their minds, it can be hard to block it out.
So let's flip it around and give some praise to Brandon Aubrey. His first two kicks on the day were no good – getting one blocked and the second one hitting the upright.
How did he respond? Well, he drilled a 46-yard field goal before the half that gave the Cowboys some momentum heading into the break, tied 3-3. He then hit a 48-yard field goal in the fourth and all of his extra points, which we know are critical.
So if the Cowboys were fortunate that Washington missed its kick, give them some praise for making their own kicks.
If you really think about the entire 60 minutes of football, the Cowboys were the better team. Are they a better team overall? Well, the record doesn't suggest that right now.
But if you watched that game closely, from offense, defense and special teams, the Cowboys were better. Rush will never be as flashy as Jayden Daniels, who is already a star in this league. But Rush was better on Sunday because he took care of the ball a little better and managed the game better throughout.
Let's also not forget the players who weren't here for the Cowboys. This was supposed to be the game they got players back, such as Jordan Lewis, Marshawn Kneeland and DaRon Bland. Yet they had to play without both starting guards, Zack Martin and Tyler Smith, along with cornerback Trevon Diggs and tight end Jake Ferguson. My count had a total of 13 combined Pro Bowls on the inactive list.
And think about it, some of the key players in the game were the guys directly backing up those injured players. Butler was phenomenal with 12 tackles, a sack and three pass breakups starting for Diggs. T.J. Bass and Brock Hoffman brought some attitude to the middle of the line, and the Cowboys ran the ball fairly well, pushing the pile quite a few times to open some running lanes. And Schoonmaker had two catches, but both were big, including the 22-yard touchdown catch that should've iced the game.
Of course, Rush is the next-man-up for Dak Prescott and certainly had his best performance of the season. That was the veteran backup we were expecting to see. Nothing dynamic but solid and effective.
Now you can win that way if your defense plays lights out. And it sucks that they gave up the 86-yard touchdown in the final seconds to spoil what was a phenomenal effort for most of the game. But overall, you have to give Mike Zimmer's crew a lot of credit for the way they kept the Commanders off the board for most of the day. It wasn't perfect, but something to build off of, especially if they can continue to get some guys back from injury.
As I'm typing this, I still keep going back to the stat sheet and trying to tell myself that game actually happened.
But it most certainly did. So far, this season has seen one unexpected event after another, week in and week out. Most of them have gone against the Cowboys.
Fitting they finally got the ball to bounce their way … or hook to the left.
