Cowboys WR CeeDee Lamb Gives Definitive Answer on Week 12 Availability

You did not really think that this CeeDee Lamb ankle injury was going to halt what has been a magical season, did you?

Well, the Cowboys star indicated that would not be the case this week as the team tries to quickly pull together for Thursday’s Thanksgiving game against Washington.

Lamb was listed as “limited” on the Cowboys injury list on Monday. But he promised he’d be on the field—and he’d be himself.

“I’m straight. I’ll be out there,” he said to reporters before breaking into a big smile. “Getting active.”

We’ve seen what Lamb can do in recent weeks. He had six catches for just 38 yards on Sunday in the blowout win over the Panthers, but he had a touchdown and had been explosive in the weeks before that. He had 41 catches in the previous four weeks, for 617 yards.

The 38 yards against Carolina stopped Lamb’s streak of three straight games with 150-plus yards, but he still managed to top 1,000 yards receiving for the year, and now stands at 1,013 for the year, tied for second in the NFL with A.J. Brown of the Eagles. Tyreek Hill of the Dolphins leads the NFL, with 1,222 yards receiving.

His career high in yardage is the 1,359 yards he totaled last season and, with seven games to play, assuming there is no further CeeDee Lamb ankle injury coming down the pike, he should surpass that with ease.

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Panthers D, Not Ankle Injury, Was the Week 11 Issue

But one thing that Lamb does expect to see is more of the kind of cautious coverages the Cowboys saw in Week 11 in Carolina. The goal of the Panthers, clearly, was to keep a cap on how much the Cowboys offense was going to be able to throw the ball, and in the end, Dallas wound up with just 204 passing yards, the team’s fewest since the Week 5 loss in San Francisco.

That result, though, had more to do with the defense’s design than any CeeDee Lamb injury, though.

“When the passing game is as strong as ours has been the past couple weeks or month if you will, they have a tendency to switch it up and go to the 2-shell, to kind of keep an umbrella over everything and we already understood that coming into the game,” Lamb said.

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CeeDee Lamb ‘Excited’ for Running Game

Instead, the Cowboys leaned on the running game, especially starting back Tony Pollard, who had come under fire in recent weeks for poor production. More than one observer had called for a reduction in Pollard’s role, which made some sense given the fact that he had been held to 55 yards or fewer for six straight weeks, and had not scored a touchdown since the opening game.

Pollard got 12 carries in Week 11 and tallied 61 yards—an impressive 5.1 yards per carry average—and, finally, scored a touchdown.

Color CeeDee Lamb impressed.

“That was very exciting,” he said. “Obviously, we know what he was going through, know how he was feeling. We had plenty of conversations on our away games. We sit right next to each other, we watch film together. So we’ve definitely talked and I’m glad that he’s kept his head. Just being professional about the situation and obviously waiting on his opportunity. And when he did, you saw it.”

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