CeeDee Lamb is out with an ankle sprain. The Cowboys are playing the Ravens in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday afternoon. Those two facts together make for a bad weekend in Dallas.
Losing Lamb Changes the Entire Offense
Lamb is not a piece of the Cowboys’ passing game, he is the organizing principle of it. Defenses build their coverage rules around where he lines up, which is what creates the room everyone else operates in. Take him out and the whole thing flattens.
The Cowboys have spent years learning this lesson. When Lamb plays, the offense functions. When he does not, it becomes a series of contested throws into coverage that was not stressed by anything else on the field.
Ankle Sprains Are Slippery
The frustrating thing about an ankle sprain for a receiver is the recovery curve. It is rarely a clean one-week absence. Receivers need to plant, cut and accelerate out of breaks, and an ankle that is 85 percent produces a player who runs routes at 85 percent sharpness. Corners notice within two snaps.
Dallas has to decide whether losing Lamb for one game is better than getting a compromised version of him for three. Sitting him for the international trip, where the travel and the field surface add variables nobody can control, is the defensible call.
The Field Question Makes It Worse
The NFL has cleared the Maracana surface for play after an inspection involving the league’s field director, an independent inspector and an NFLPA representative. Field Director Nick Pappas said things check out and additional improvements were made.
Even with that clearance, sending a receiver with a fresh ankle sprain onto a converted soccer pitch 4,800 miles from home would be an act of organizational recklessness. Whatever the tests say, the risk calculus for an already-injured ankle is different from the risk calculus for a healthy one.
Dallas Is the Designated Home Team
Here is the extra indignity. This counts as a Cowboys home game. They gave up a date at their own stadium, made the trip, and now they play it without their best offensive player.
Baltimore has its own issues, and neither team is arriving at full strength. But the Ravens are not the ones surrendering a home game and their number one receiver in the same week.
What Dallas Needs Sunday
The Cowboys need their running game to be real and they need someone on the perimeter to win a one-on-one without Lamb drawing the safety. That is a lot to ask on short notice in an unfamiliar stadium.
Get out of Rio with a win and nobody remembers the circumstances. Lose, and this becomes the game where Dallas gave away a home date and their best player in the same 72 hours.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.