The Dallas Cowboys were able to pull away from the Indianapolis Colts with a 27-23 victory. But it wasn’t without some costly mistakes that made the team’s job so much more difficult. With 14 penalties, the Cowboys have got to get it together. One of them was a silly penalty on linebacker DeMarvion Overshown, who got an unsportsmanlike conduct flag despite being inactive for the game.
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“I was pissed,” quarterback Dak Prescott said on Thursday. “I spoke my mind, and I don’t think I’ve ever been short or shy to [speak] in a moment when it’s, you know, truly, truly bothered me. And yeah, that was just a big play … the turnover happened, and a flag comes out. We did some great stuff here; let’s not minimize it. … We’re grown men at the end of the day. I don’t think, and me personally, if you need somebody to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do, I don’t know if this is the business for you.”
The Cowboys caught a much-needed break when Quinnen Williams forced a fumble on Colts RB Jonathan Taylor in the red zone, stopping the Colts from capitalizing on CeeDee Lamb’s costly fourth-quarter turnover. But the crucial moment quickly took an unexpected turn. As the Cowboys gathered to celebrate the defensive stop, officials threw a flag, thanks to Overshown.
Although ruled inactive with hamstring and back injuries, the linebacker ran onto the field in street clothes to join his teammates. The move earned Dallas an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, adding another avoidable setback to an already chaotic sequence.
Overshown did apologize to his teammates.
“At the end of the day, I talked to Schotty about it,” he said Thursday, via Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News. “I apologized about it. It was definitely in the moment, but earlier I had said that as a defense, we’re going to start celebrating more, getting takeaways. And I was just caught in the moment.
“So you can laugh at it now, because we won the game, but in the moment, fourth quarter, tied ball game or close ball game, you don’t want a 15-yard penalty from a guy, especially that’s not even playing. So that’s a lesson learned.”
“It’s not an indictment on Schotty. It’s on me as a player. I own it.”
The move might now be in the past, but it clearly angered people.
“Yeah, addressed it one-on-one with D-Mo first, addressed it with the football team,” head coach Brian Schottenheimer said. “Totally unacceptable, and it won’t happen again.”
“It is (unacceptable)…” team CEO and co-owner Stephen Jones said when speaking on 105.3 The Fan. “It’s not a good look. It’s not a disciplined look. We certainly didn’t play a disciplined game yesterday with (14) penalties. We have to be better than that.”
For a player who has already struggled to remain available, Overshown’s decision to take the field with an injured hamstring could raise further questions about his future. He has appeared in only 22 of the team’s 60 possible games during his career, per the Dallas Morning News. The unsportsmanlike conduct penalty adds another unwanted chapter to that story. He has been limited to just three games as he deals with injuries.
DeMarvion Overshown also said that he didn’t know inactive players couldn’t do what he did until linebacker Dee Winters yelled at him. However, it looks like the team is going to let this mistake slide.
“I didn’t realize he was on the field until I was in the end zone and I was right there,” Cobie Durant said. “So I was like, ‘What are you doing out here?’ But the excitement, the joy — it’s all good. We all know you can’t do that. He was just overexcited, and I don’t blame him. But he learned from it and on to the next game. He apologized for it; I mean, that’s it.”