Let’s not act like every Cowboys player had a bad game vs Green Bay

Like a typical boogieman horror movie, the Dallas Cowboys had the Green Bay Packers and quarterback Aaron Rodgers down for the count multiple times, looking to have the beast finally dead to rights only to have him crawl back to continue to fight again.

Dallas put up the toughest fight they had in the last six attempts against Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay. They had a 100-yard receiver, a 250-yard passer who threw for three touchdowns, a 100-yard rusher, and even were leading by 14 points in the fourth quarter. Rodgers would not allow his Packers to die though, bringing them back to steal a game and save their season.

In games like this, looking past the win and loss results, to see the players that stepped up for their team is difficult. Three players for Dallas played well enough to help their team win, even though it wasn’t enough to kill their personal boogeyman. Here are the three stars of the Cowboys loss to the Green Bay Packers.

Tony Pollard

(Photo by Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images)

Tony Pollard had another excellent game as the starting running back for the Dallas Cowboys. He was more like an efficient Ezekiel Elliott than the typical big play machine Pollard can be.

The Packers defensive backs had an elite game tackling the Cowboys top playmaker. Three of the top four tacklers for Green Bay were defensive backs. The Cowboys longest rush wasn’t even Pollard, but instead backup Malik Davis, who had the longest run of the day at only 17 yards.

Tony Pollard ran the ball 22 times, close to a work horse type outing, for 115 yards and a touchdown. That’s an average of over five yards per attempt, that would be top ten on the season among running backs, but a full yard behind his league leading 6.2 yards per carry going into the game. He did hit one big, impressive TD run to give the Cowboys the led in the third quarter. Offensive coordinator Kellen Moore called a beautiful second and ten draw play and Pollard scooted through the middle of the defense for a score.

A game like today shows the quality of Tony Pollard. He played with less production than what he usually does, and even those numbers were good enough to be the third star of the game.

Demarcus Lawrence

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Dallas played extremely poorly on defense in the fourth quarter, giving up a 14-point lead on the way to a loss. Maybe when a team gives up over 200 yards rushing, a three to zero touchdown to interception ratio, and allows a rookie wide receiver to average over 26 yards per reception while scoring three touchdowns, they don’t deserve a star of the game. For this game at least, one player stepped up and played like a leader.

Demarcus Lawrence held up as he typically does against the run, he even led the team along with Parsons and Donovan Wilson with seven tackles. The NFL doesn’t get to many games that a defensive lineman leads the team in tackles for a game. Lawrence also added a tackle for a loss, a QB hit, drew a holding call to negate a big play for Green Bay and almost had the play to break open the game early.

After a Cowboys touchdown to put the team up 7-0, Aaron Rodgers was trying to keep the Packers from going three and out. On third and three, Lawrence came up with what could have been a possible fatal blow. He sacked Rodgers, causing a fumble, that the Cowboys recovered on the ten-yard line.

Dallas was set up to just need ten yards to go up 14-0, possibly limiting the Green Bay rushing attack the rest of the game. That is a star making play that shouldn’t be diminished because the offense failed to do its job to cash it in.

CeeDee Lamb

Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

While Christian Watson left the game a team hero, scoring three times on four catches in the Green Bay win, he did it against Anthony Brown, Kelvin Joseph, and Daron Bland. CeeDee Lamb walked into Lambeau Field and faced off with one of the top corners in the league in Jaire Alexander and owned him like a top 20 pick, and a top receiver in the league should.

This hopefully is the game Lamb can replicate for the rest of the season. He was consistent, made the easy plays, as well as the big change of momentum ones. Those included not only the opening score of the game, but later a huge third and nine pick up while being double teamed, and the score to seemingly put away the Packers at the time directly on Jaire Alexander two plays later.

CeeDee Lamb played like the star receiver cowboys nation expected him to be when he was drafted No. 17 overall in the 2020 draft. He caught 11 of 15 targets, for 150 yards, and two touchdowns and would be getting a game ball if the team held on for the victory.

You can find Mike Crum on Twitter @cdpiglet or at Youtube on the Across the Cowboys Podcast.

Story originally appeared on Cowboys Wire