Dez Bryant is back and the Cowboys should be feared again

It was touch and go for the Dallas Cowboys for a while there.

Yes, the Cowboys clinched the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs this month, but December had not been kind to Dallas before Monday night.

It started with a game against Minnesota where the Vikings gave the rest of the NFL a blueprint to beat the Cowboys — even if they couldn't fully execute it themselves.

Then there was the loss to the Giants — the second loss to New York this season. That was followed by calls to bench Dak Prescott for Tony Romo and the period of uncertainty that accompanies such talk.

And while Dallas' win over the Buccaneers last week helped quiet those calls for Prescott's job — they didn't do much to quell the thoughts that the Cowboys might be paper lions, regressing to the mean at the absolute wrong time.

It took a game against the Lions to eliminate those thoughts once and for all.

It took a massive game from Dez Bryant and a rock-solid second-half performance by a defense that was starting to look shaky to get Dallas back to where they once were.

Monday night's 42-21 win re-calibrated everything for Dallas — the Cowboys aren't fading, they're now peaking at the perfect time.

And they put together one of their best performances of the season against a team that's fairly indicative of the playoff competition in the NFC.

Yes, it's time to fear the Cowboys again.

It's time to fear Dez Bryant again. Bryant wasn't a no-show for the Cowboys' touch-and-go month — just that one game against the Giants – but while his stats from Monday might blend in with two of the other December games on the ledger, his impact against the Lions was massive and not quantifiable in the box score.

Bryant's incredible touchdown catch with a little more than a minute left in the first half was the pivotal play of the contest. Detroit was leading by a touchdown and the two teams were poised to have a full-on Texas shootout — it was going to be about which offense cracked first. The Cowboys, with their rookie quarterback and an offensive line that was struggling in pass protection against a less-than-fearsome pass rush, was probably going to be the losing party in that duel.

Then Prescott threw one to the end zone and asked Bryant to make a play.

And what a play he made.

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You could feel momentum shift in the moment: the Cowboys had a chance to fade away when the going got tough, but that play — that incredible catch — revitalized an offense that looked like it was losing its spark and exterminated a building confidence in the Lions' defense.

It only goes down as one catch, 25 yards, and a touchdown in the box score, but the impact of that play was so much more than that.

Because from that point on, the Cowboys looked like a juggernaut.

 

When Bryant is his all-world self, the Cowboys' offense is almost unstoppable. Dallas' offense is always going to be a run-first one, and Cole Beasley and Jason "Watch me run receiver drills while country music plays and, hey, buy auto insurance (?)" Witten might be Prescott's favorite receiver, but Bryant is the team's game-changer in the passing game and on Monday, the entire NFL was reminded exactly what it means when Bryant puts his stamp on a contest.

Bryant's touchdown pass to Witten was the highlight of the game, and Dez's second touchdown catch, in double coverage, wasn't anything to scoff at, but both plays were byproducts of the earlier catch and the confidence that it infused into the entire Dallas team.

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It made it to the defensive side of the ball, too.

Dallas gave up touchdowns on their first three possessions of the game — Detroit had amassed 186 yards by the halfway point of the second quarter. The Dallas defensive line was being manhandled, the Lions were running the ball with success (a new and novel concept for Detroit), and Matthew Stafford was carving up the Cowboys' secondary.

But the Cowboys' defense — a unit defined by its ups and downs this season — activated on the final two defensive series of the half and came out in the second half with a point to prove.

 

Dallas locked down the Detroit running game — the Lions had only 25 yards on the ground in the second half — and held Stafford to 4.92 yards per pass attempt in the second-half shutout.

The Cowboys' defense is never going to be the best in the league, but it doesn't have to be — not when the Dallas offense is clicking like it did Monday.

But when Dallas' offense is going full bore and the defense is backing it up with lock-down play, there's not a team in the NFL that can beat the Cowboys.

So much for that late-season fade.