You have to hand it to Jalen Carter. The lead story of the 2025 NFL kickoff game between the Cowboys and Eagles should have been about the absence of Dallas’s former defensive star Micah Parsons, until Carter said hold my Gatorade backwash.
Before playing a single snap, the Eagles’ star defensive tackle was ejected from the game for spitting on Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott. That this incident took place during an injury timeout after Eagles fullback Ben VanSumeren was carted off the field after the opening kickoff made for a bizarre first six seconds of the season.
Those of us who remember the Don’t Worry Darling press tour know that a Spitgate does not come and go gently. The loogie in question is already getting replay-reviewed on every corner of the internet. Those reviews show that Prescott actually spit too, and first, though he appeared to aim at the ground and, plausibly, it was not intended with aggression. More of a baseball dugout spit?
Provoked or not, Carter’s reaction was childish, and the fact that he had it while standing in a huddle of multiple officials was foolish, considering that the NFL has made unsportsmanlike conduct a point of emphasis this season. It’s not out of the question that Carter could be suspended.
“I feel bad for my teammates and the fans out there,” Carter said after the game.
And so, a game that one week ago figured to feature two of the NFL’s top defenders had neither—and it looked like it. Before the hour-long lightning delay in the third quarter, not a single drive ended in a punt. With Carter out of the lineup, the Cowboys ran right at the middle of the Eagles defense, while Prescott picked on a thin Philadelphia secondary. The Eagles offense was humming, despite no passing targets for star receiver A.J. Brown in the first half. The Eagles hung on for a 24-20 win, sending Dallas home with a loss in the first game of their post-Parsons era. Philly will get Carter back, but the Cowboys have no such fix. After trading Parsons, Jerry Jones said the move would help Dallas invest in run defense. “We haven’t been able to stop the run in key times in several years,” he said.
NFL 2025 Kicks Off
In the first half alone, the Eagles rushed for 123 yards and three touchdowns against the Cowboys. Quarterback Jalen Hurts had 62 rushing yards and scrambled for two scores. He was 2-for-2 on tush push conversions in the second half, and he sealed the game with a run up the middle on third-and-3 with less than two minutes to play, the kind of play that a team with a defensive closer might have shut down. Defensive tackle Kenny Clark, who came from Green Bay in the Parsons trade, actually played very well, with five tackles. It just didn’t really matter when it counted.
And as they were giving up over 4.5 yards per carry to the Eagles, the Cowboys had little semblance of a pass rush. Another part of Jones’s reasoning for the Parsons trade was “the ability to scheme pressure,” and “make up for Micah, because obviously he’s elite at rushing the passer.”
In fairness, later on in the game Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus did find some success slowing the Eagles down by sending extra pass rushers, but it was hard to tell how much the game simply stalled following the long weather delay. Overall, the Cowboys’ rush was toothless. The Cowboys hit Hurts only five times and sacked him once, for the game’s only sack. In a conference loaded with talented offenses in Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit, San Francisco, and Green Bay, it's hard to see a defensive front that can’t pressure with four as sustainable.
Jones said postgame, however, that he was happy with the effort.
“I specifically was watching a lot of the guys who were taking up the slack,” he said. “All in all, this group adjusted.”
The Cowboys aren’t fully buried after one road loss to the defending champs. Prescott and the offense looked great in the first half and they had a chance to win until CeeDee Lamb couldn’t come down with two deep balls on what was ultimately Dallas’s final drive. They can still compete. What would really help would be a great pass rusher.
