‘If I Had The Answer’: Dak Prescott, Jerry Jones Address George Pickens’ Two-Catch Day In Dallas Cowboys’ Loss To Arizona Cardinals
ARLINGTON, Texas — George Pickens was targeted four times and caught 2 passes for 48 yards Sunday as the Dallas Cowboys lost 33-30 in overtime to the Arizona Cardinals at AT&T Stadium. A third catch, for 35 yards in the third quarter, was wiped out by an offensive holding penalty.
Pickens’ 37-yard catch late in the third quarter set Dallas up at the Arizona 25, and a 23-yard pass interference penalty three plays later moved the Cowboys to the 2. CeeDee Lamb was targeted 11 times and caught 7 passes for 58 yards. Dallas finished with 168 net passing yards.
Dak Prescott was not sure how many targets Pickens had afterward. He goes through his reads to the open receiver, he said.
“If I had the answer, we’d get him involved,” Prescott said. “I’m not trying to be rude or whatever it is, but he made some plays any time the ball went his way. He came up with them. Right, he had the one, unfortunately, came back for a holding. There’s another one. I just tried to give him a chance. I felt Budda coming over there pretty fast, so I couldn’t put it with as much air as I’d have liked. Just tried to give him a chance. DB made a good play.”
“I still got to go back and watch the film,” Prescott continued. “Not sure about even how many targets he had. As I tell you all before, I go through the reads, try to throw it to the open guy and stay consistent and true to that. And so I’ve got to go back and look at the film and see if I missed him, see if we could have went to him more, see if we could have went to CeeDee more. I feel like it was a game that CeeDee didn’t have as many catches as per usual. But we still had a chance to win and should have won it.”
Jerry Jones Calls Getting George Pickens Involved A Two-Edged Sword
Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones said getting Pickens involved is a combination of things. Dallas ran 39 times for 93 yards.
“You’ve got to get the ball, it’s a two-edged sword. You got to get the ball going that way,” Jones said. “I’m not criticizing at all, but we certainly felt that with the way the offensive line played last week, the way we were running the ball, we thought we were in good shape, especially when we got the ball the second time in the overtime.”
“That was, for me, that was as disappointing as being in that spot to begin with to get to overtime,” Jones added.
Brian Schottenheimer Says Passing Game Did Not Come Easy
Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer calls the offensive plays. Arizona sacked Prescott four times for 27 yards.
“Would have loved to have had that one back. They got called back,” Schottenheimer said. “They come in bunches. I think the passing game in general tonight didn’t come easy to us. Made some plays that we needed to. Got to put the game away in the red zone.”
“That’s what I want to look at,” Schottenheimer noted. “I want to look at the red zone and see if we score a few more touchdowns. I think that gives us a chance to not even be in this situation. We’ll look at it and see.”
Dallas scored touchdowns on 3 of its 5 trips inside the Arizona 20. Arizona mixed its coverages, in Schottenheimer’s view.
“We certainly had a chance to have a big play called back to George. Had a big one, got a P.I. penalty on another one,” Schottenheimer explained. “I thought they did a good job of mixing their coverages. They got after the quarterback pretty good. I thought they did a nice job with that. But at the end of the day, there was some plays out there for us to make, and we’ve got to make those plays to win this game.”
The Cowboys fell to 3-5. Dallas visits the Indianapolis Colts on Nov. 8 at Lucas Oil Stadium. Kickoff is set for noon CT on FOX.
