The Cowboys will have their ‘dress rehearsal’ game against the Arizona Cardinals this weekend, meaning that we should see the starters play more than they have through the preseason thus far. However, after the injuries suffered by first-teamers throughout the preseason, don’t expect the starters to play that many snaps if any.
That we don’t know, but what we do know is that the Cardinals will be playing a majority of their first-teamers against Dallas, there are many position battles throughout this team that need to be settled before the start of the regular season, particularly at the quarterback position.
Arizona has completely overturned the quarterback position this offseason, none of the four quarterbacks currently on the team were on the squad in the 2017-2018 season. It seems that the team is letting Sam Bradford and Josh Rosen battle for the starting spot.
This means that Cowboy fans should expect to see the Arizona first-team offense to play at least a half with each quarterback getting roughly a quarter of play, barring injury. With Byron Jones, Xavier Woods, and Kavon Frazier banged up, expect to see a lot of guys that you’re not used to running with the first or second unit on Sunday.
Assuming that the Cowboys carry nine defensive backs and that seven of the spots are locked up (Lewis, Awuzie, Woods, Heath, Jones, Brown, Frazier), that will leave two spots available to Marquez White, Duke Thomas, Charvarius Ward and others to compete for.
This is what makes the preseason so fun and interesting to all of us football nerds out there, these guys will get the chance to prove themselves to their coaches by facing off against one of the greatest of all-time in Larry Fitzgerald and an impressive rookie in Christian Kirk and the rest of the Cardinals’ first-team receivers.
The opportunity that these young defensive backs are getting Sunday night will be that they surely will not get against the Houston Texans next Thursday.
At the end of the day, I expect this to be another loss for the Cowboys just because the Cardinals will most likely have their first-team talent on the field a lot longer than I’d expect the Cowboys to have theirs. Luckily, these games don’t count for anything besides player evaluation, passing game coordinator coach Kris Richard will definitely get a full evaluation of his guys after this game.
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