We all saw how the game ended last Sunday in Foxborough. The Cowboys' defense, as great as it played for 57 minutes, got Tom Brady'd in the end and couldn't stop them one more time.
It's a team game, the entire team loss. But it'd be wrong not to at least point out one individual who was playing at the highest of levels – and has been all year.
While Sean Lee's clutch interception was highlight-reel material, he was all over the field Sunday, recording 19 tackles, the most by any Cowboys player since Dexter Coakley's 19 against the Cardinals in 2002. Lee's 15 solo tackles ties him with Coakley for the second-most in a game, one behind Eugene Lockhart's record of 16 solo stops.
Now, you should all know by now that charting tackles isn't an exact science. The NFL stat crew does it after the game, but teams record their own tackles and often times it's a lot more than what the league posts on the stat sheet after a game. That's why sites like NFL.com never have the same amount of tackles as the teams report.
That being said, Lee was credited for 12 tackles and after the Cowboys reviewed the tape, it turned into 19. But before you go thinking the Cowboys are just tackle-padding, look at a guy like Jay Ratliff, who was credited with nine on the stat sheet, but was given just six by the team. So it does go both ways at time.
For Lee, he's just been unbelievable here in the first five games. The Cowboys have him with 66 tackles, which is one pace to become the third player in franchise history with more than 200 tackles in a season. Lee also leads all NFL linebackers with three interceptions and he's already halfway to the club's single-season record for interceptions by a linebacker. Ring of Honor members Chuck Howley and Lee Roy Jordan (twice) both had six interceptions in a season.
The best part for Lee, is that he's doing his work on the national stage, with all three of his interceptions occurring on either prime-time, or the national network game. Lee was also the first player in franchise history to win the NFC Defensive Player of the Month award for September.
