A game of 'Yahtzee': The end to the Dallas Cowboys' win over Washington was wild

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has a few go-to sayings. He’ll often say he’s not trying to be “cute” when he says something that could be construed as a jab or joke. He uses the idea of a mirror to explain the differences in perspectives between one person and another.

One move he’ll often pull is to remind people that a football is oblong. That its bounces are unpredictable.

Not to be cute, but the sports itself can mirror that unpredictable and oblong nature, as Sunday’s Cowboys game showed.

The Cowboys and Commanders played a wild one in Landover, Maryland, on Sunday. Dallas won 34-26, though the score doesn’t begin to tell the journey it took to get there.

Consider a statistic shared on the FOX broadcast, for starters. Sunday’s game was the first one in NFL history that featured:

• 2 missed field goals
• 2 kickoff return touchdowns (one of which happened on an onside kickoff attempt)
• and a blocked punt

And that isn’t even the extent of it. The Cowboys also had one of their field goals blocked, while the Commanders also had two missed extra points. The last of which came after Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels threw an 86-yard touchdown to bring Washington with one point of tying the game with 21 seconds left.

“We got down to it at the end here and it was just a game situational extravaganza,” Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said. “It was like Yahtzee, everything was in there.”

Special teams was a central theme from the very beginning. The Cowboys drove down the field on the opening drive and had the chance to take the lead, only for the Commanders to block a kick from All-Pro Brandon Aubrey. The Cowboys did the same thing on their second drive, but Aubrey — almost always reliable — pushed a 41-yard field goal, keeping Dallas scoreless in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, Washington kicker Austin Seibert also badly missed a field goal in the first quarter, keeping points off the board for the Commanders, as well.

Things changed on special teams in the second half, at least for Dallas. Instead of taking points off the board, the Cowboys’ special teams unit added to Dallas’ point total. The spark came from KaVontae Turpin, who returned his first kickoff for a touchdown. He’s been one of the best returners in the NFL since he entered in 2021, earning Pro Bowl status his first season. A kickoff return touchdown has eluded him, however, until Sunday.

The touchdown itself was unpredictable, too. Turpin initially misplayed the kick. He turned around and calmly picked up the ball before jogging toward the oncoming defenders.

“Only a psychopath can be this calm and do this,” Cowboys teammate Jourdan Lewis said on X.

Because after calmly jogging, Turpin put his foot in the ground and spun back towards the other direction, opening a path to the endzone that he didn’t mind blazing.

“He’s been hitting it in practice a couple times,” Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb said of the spin move, “and he’s got a couple guys with it. That’s his secret. That’s his escape move, if you will. When all else fails, be careful, because he will hit you with it.”

The touchdown felt like a dagger, but that would come later. After Seibert’s missed game-tying PAT, the Commanders went with an onside kick. Cowboys safety Juanyeh Thomas picked it up, quickly evaded a couple defenders and ran into the endzone for a touchdown.

“It was a tale of two halves: their special teams made the good plays in the first half, ours made them in the second half,” McCarthy said.

It was as special of an ending as it was unpredictable — true to football’s oblong nature.