‘I had to step up’: Cowboys WR CeeDee Lamb makes up for awful drop with one-handed TD

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for CeeDee Lamb.

After letting what looked like a sure touchdown literally slip right through his grasp in the second quarter, the Cowboys’ newly-anointed WR1 had plenty of time to think about what went wrong.

“Very frustrating, honestly,” Lamb said of the wide-open drop that came on just his third target of the night. “Just because I practiced all week, all offseason, focusing in on the ball, and I let that one slip away.”

Instead of extending the Dallas lead to 10 points just before halftime, the gaffe led to a punt and kept the game a one-score affair until well into the final quarter. That’s when Lamb got his hero moment in dramatic fashion and helped seal a 23-16 win for the Cowboys over their divisional rivals.

But redemption can only come after a fall. And even when the 23-year-old let a perfectly-placed ball fall to the MetLife Stadium turf, his teammates weren’t the least bit worried about Lamb laying down.

“It happens,” fellow wideout Noah Brown explained after the game. “It’s part of the game, even for an excellent player like him. It does happen. But what makes him excellent is the ability to bounce back and make a play later on down the road. And he did that.”

“The most important play is the next one,” running back Ezekiel Elliott echoed. “CeeDee’s got that mentality. He’s got high expectations of himself, so that’s why he was kind of beating himself up. But all that matters is how you respond, and he responded really well.”

“You know he’ll be fine,” said quarterback Cooper Rush. “CeeDee’s a guy you don’t worry about that type of mentality with. He’s a big-time player; he’s going to make plays. The ball’s coming his way some more: he knew it, I knew it, we all knew it.”

And it did, over and over. Lamb went on to be the team’s leading receiver on the night, netting eight receptions on 12 twelve total targets for 87 yards.

“I appreciate Kellen for trusting in me,” Lamb said later, “and all the guys for believing in my ability. It was a tough third quarter; I kept thinking about it. All the guys kept preaching to me, ‘Let it go, let it go. We’ve got more game left.’ And then fourth quarter, I kept hearing my number being called, it was my opportunity again. I had to step up.”

Lamb’s character arc came in two parts. The first was a gusty catch on a 4th-and-4 call, hanging onto the Rush pass right at the sticks despite a wicked hit from safety Dane Belton (the same Giants defender who Lamb had turned completely around on his earlier drop).

And then, just two plays after that, he made up for dropping a ball that everyone thought he should have caught… by reeling in one that nobody expected.

In the span of ninety minutes, Lamb had gone from goat to Giant-killer.

“CeeDee’s got that 88 on for a reason,” Elliott raved. “He’s a superstar.”

“He’s CeeDee Lamb,” said Rush. “He’s going to make plays.”

“We see it all the time in practice,” Brown shrugged. “I’m not surprised.”

The one-handed grab will be a permanent part of Lamb’s highlight reel, on par with the gravity-defying corkscrew catch he made in Minnesota as a rookie in 2019.

But the former first-round draft pick pointed out that his fourth-down catch in the Meadowlands Monday night was actually the biggest play of all, even more important than the score that put the Cowboys ahead to stay.

“Fourth down, most definitely,” he told media members. “Because without it, I don’t get a touchdown.”

Lamb was then asked which of the two was his favorite catch of the night.

“Fourth-down catch,” he repeated with a smile. “Because without it, I don’t get a touchdown.”

When the story of CeeDee Lamb’s career is told, it may well be this Week 3 journey from blooper to game-winner that saw him truly evolve into the No. 1 receiver the Cowboys imagined when they traded away Amari Cooper.

Lamb acknowledges the ups and downs are just part of the job that he now has sole possession of in Dallas.

“It’s going to have its ebbs and flows. It’s all about being consistent, staying positive. Everything’s not going to go my way. But when it does, it’s going to go big.”

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Story originally appeared on Cowboys Wire