The Dallas Cowboys take the field Monday night for the first time since they were overwhelmed in Santa Clara, Calif., last Sunday night by the San Francisco 49ers.
The Cowboys (3-2) visit the Los Angeles Chargers (2-2) at SoFi Stadium, likely angry and ready to prove that they’re not as bad as the Niners made them look a week ago.
But they’ll see an old friend, Kellen Moore, their former offensive coordinator, who now coaches in that same title with the Chargers (Chargers offensive coordinator Kellen Moore tries to tone down revenge talk vs. Cowboys).
Moore took the fall as the scapegoat, in some people’s opinion, for an underachieving Dallas team in 2022, when their season was ended by those same 49ers in the playoffs.
For his part, Moore said the focus won’t be on that at all once the game starts.
“Yeah, I think it’s easy for everyone to overthink it,” he said. “People are continuing to evolve, schemes evolve, schemes change. There are a lot of trends in this league. We get to over-analyze stuff a little during the week, and then we get to football as we get closer to Monday. I think a lot of that stuff is pretty overrated. It’s getting on the field and playing 11 on 11.”
Last week, it certainly didn’t look like the Cowboys were an offensive juggernaut without Moore, managing only one touchdown and a field goal in a 42-10 loss. The Cowboys’ offense, since then, has been called simple and too vanilla by many football analysts.
The Chargers are getting 388 yards a game, There is this, though: Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert, who we’ve dubbed ‘Han Solo’ here at TFB because of his coolness in the pocket, has a broken finger on his left hand, his non-throwing hand. It’s the middle finger, broken at Las Vegas.
Can the Cowboys pass rush get to Herbert? The win tonight likely depends upon it.
