A pass interference penalty on Ravens cornerback Nate Wiggins set the Cowboys up on the Baltimore 2-yard-line with 23 seconds left in Sunday’s game against the Ravens.
Scoring a touchdown would have put the Cowboys up by at least three points before they kicked the ball back to Baltimore, but two incompletions, a false start and a scramble by quarterback Dak Prescott left them to settle for a game-tying field goal with seven seconds left. After a touchback, Lamar Jackson hit Zay Flowers with a long pass and the Ravens won the game with a 56-yard field goal after calling a timeout with one second remaining in regulation.
“Frustrated,” Prescott said, via the team’s website. “Frustrated as hell. Excuse me. Embarrassed. We don’t call ourselves the best offense, GOTI [Greatest Offense There Is], and get down to the one-yard line and don’t put it in. Yeah, it just sucks. Not a lot of words or full explanation of it. Defense shouldn’t even have been in that position. Those guys were over there saying ‘it’s on us,’ absolutely not. We’ve got to put the game away, period.”
Prescott was lamenting the offense’s inability to get the ball in the end zone, but the Cowboys would have still had a shot if they’d done a better job of managing the clock on that final drive. While a field goal to tie the game wouldn’t have erased the sting of failing to score a touchdown or guaranteed a win, it would have felt a lot better coming on the final play of regulation.
The Cowboys also could have had Brandon Aubrey kick off short of the end zone in order to force a Ravens return that would have eaten up the time they used to pull out the victory. Had any of those things played out differently, the flight back to Dallas from Rio would have been a much more enjoyable one for the Cowboys.