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Demarcus Lawrence, Leighton Vander Esch hammer referees following Arizona loss

IMG_0985by: Griffin McVeigh01/03/22griffin_mcveigh

Just when it seemed as if the Dallas Cowboys were back to their winning ways last week, they dropped one on Sunday to the Arizona Cardinals. Quarterback Dak Prescott and the offense once again struggled, not finding a real groove until it was too little too late.

A major factor, for both Dallas and Arizona, was the referees. For periods of the game, it seemed as if there were flags being thrown on every play — with most of them being questionable ones.

Defensive end Demarcus Lawrence commented on the referee’s performance after the game. Without directly calling them out, he subtlety took a shot to the crew that worked Sunday’s game.

“It’s a possibility we see both of these teams in the playoffs,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence was not the only Dallas player vocal about the performance. After the game, linebacker Leighton Vander Esch talked about a certain play at the end of the game that could have given the Cowboys the ball back with less than two minutes to go.

“It was totally a fumble, and I just don’t understand how, with the technology we have nowadays, even if we don’t have timeouts or whatever it may be … Certain things are so obvious,” Vander Esch said. “To me, we’re playing more against the refs than other teams.”

Dallas Cowboys poor clock managment costs team

Stop me when you have heard this before but an NFL head coach does not know how to properly manage the clock. Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy was the latest to show that on Sunday.

The Cardinals appeared to fumble the ball just before the two-minute warning, but the officials ruled that Chase Edmunds was down.

Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy could have challenged the play, but he was out of timeouts. Per NFL rules, you must have at least one timeout to challenge a play. Because the play also occurred prior to the two-minute warning, it was not automatically reviewed.

Dallas trailed the entirety of the game, but made a valiant comeback effort late. The Cowboys scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, completing a two-point conversion on the last one to pull within three points.

Had McCarthy not used up all of the team’s timeouts, Dallas could have gotten the ball back with a chance to tie or win. Instead, Arizona quarterback Kyler Murray kneeled three straight times to run out the clock and secure a 25-22 victory.