Dallas Cowboys Week 1 Dud: Greg Zuerlein
It was a tale of two halves and the Dallas front office deserves some blame here as well. Last season, Greg Zuerlein had his share of ups and downs in his first season with the Cowboys but overall was just okay. On top of that, he had back surgery in the offseason and didn’t do much at all in the preseason.
Due to all of that, they should have brought in more competition but that wasn’t the case. Instead, they just kept rolling with Zuerlein and it appeared it was a mistake in Week 1. Greg the Leg missed a 31-yard field goal and an extra point early in the first half.
They then attempted a 60-yard field goal as well, which was also a miss — although that one is hard to put on him because it made no sense why head coach Mike McCarthy elected to try the kick.
Zuerlein got a lot of love last season for a couple of clutch plays. One was, of course, the onside kickoff that led to a win over the Atlanta Falcons in Week 2. He also nailed a long kick against the Giants in Week 5 to seal the win in the game Dak Prescott broke his ankle.
Still, he was good on just 82.9 percent of his kicks and had three missed extra points. He shouldn’t have been handed the job and he definitely shouldn’t have been the guy in Week 1 if he wasn’t healthy.
However, he then came on in the second half and hit two field goals, including a 48-yarder with less than a minute and a half to go that gave Dallas a 29-28 lead. It didn’t last as Tampa hit a field goal to win it 31-29, and the misses from Zuerlein were huge in the defeat.