paid tribute to Marshawn Kneeland<\/a> ahead of their \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d game in Las Vegas.<\/p>\nPlayers and staff wore shirts bearing Kneeland\u2019s photo, and the team also prepared a locker where his No. 94 jersey was displayed in his honor. The defensive end died Nov. 6 at age 24 of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.<\/p>\n
Quite the rebound<\/p>\n
Playing Las Vegas is exactly what Dallas\u2019 offense needed. That side of the ball hasn\u2019t looked great in its last two games. Maybe a bad opponent will get it back on track. Prescott was playing at an elite level the first seven weeks. He came back down to earth the previous two before the bye week. He was excellent again Monday night in his 13th career game with at least four touchdown passes, a franchise record. He also moved past Tony Romo as the franchise leader with 41 games with at least three passing touchdowns. \u2014 Jon Machota, Cowboys beat writer<\/p>\n
Dallas run defense blows up<\/p>\n
The Raiders wanted no part of trying to run against Dallas\u2019 front. It\u2019ll be interesting to see how opponents game plan now that the Cowboys have Quinnen Williams in the middle. Dallas has been trying to fix its run defense for a while. Could the Cowboys finally have an answer with their strongest defensive tackle group in over 15 years? \u2014 Machota<\/p>\n
Interesting strategy<\/p>\n
It was a curious offensive strategy for the Raiders, specifically in the first half. Despite having first-round pick Ashton Jeanty in the backfield and going up against a shoddy, albeit revamped, Cowboys run defense, the Raiders didn\u2019t even try to run the ball. Instead, quarterback Geno Smith threw the ball 28 times behind an offensive line that struggled to give him the time he needed.<\/p>\n
The Raiders don\u2019t generate enough opportunities on offense to where they can afford squandering gifts, which is exactly what they did early on. After they were set up on a short field by a Prescott fumble, Smith and Tre Tucker failed to connect in the end zone, and the Raiders had to settle for a field goal. Once the Cowboys\u2019 offense started clicking, with Pickens and Lamb fully incorporated, the Raiders found themselves in a track meet they are not built to compete in. \u2014 Saad Yousuf, NFL news writer<\/p>\n
Cowboys key on Crosby<\/p>\n
Outside of Maxx Crosby, the Raiders offered little resistance to Dallas\u2019 offense. Prescott has played at an MVP level for most of the season, and he\u2019s at his best when he\u2019s afforded the time to be comfortable in the pocket and distribute the ball evenly among his many talented targets. It took the Cowboys a little time early in the game to adjust to Crosby, but once they did, they were chipping him and getting creative with how to slow the Raiders\u2019 best defender. On Pickens\u2019 touchdown, Dallas had Jake Ferguson block Crosby on the edge and brought the left guard from inside on the opposite end to help slow Crosby on the right side. That play was an example of what was the case for the Cowboys all day, which was to focus on Crosby and feast on the rest of the defense. \u2014 Yousuf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jon Machota, Saad Yousuf and Amos Morale III Dak Prescott threw four touchdown passes and receiver George…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,113,104,103,1889],"class_list":{"0":"post-54456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-cowboys","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news","12":"tag-las-vegas-raiders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}