The Cowboys were still up 27-17 with 2:23 left when the game turned on a flag. Rashan Gary was penalized for an unnecessary helmet-to-helmet hit on Gardner Minshew, and Arizona went from fourth-and-10 to a first down at the 14-yard line before scoring on the next play.
That is why Pj Locke has become part of the conversation around a game that tilted in the final minutes. The Cowboys had led by 14 points in the fourth quarter and were still ahead by 10 in the closing stretch, but the late penalty gave the Cardinals the opening they needed to make the finish breathe again.
The sequence was plain and brutal. Arizona had already seen a deep pass to the end zone fall incomplete on third down, which should have left the Cowboys in command. Instead, the hit on Minshew reset the down-and-distance, and the Cardinals cashed it in almost immediately, scoring at 2:12 and doing it before the 2:00 warning could even arrive. In a game that had already seen Brandon Aubrey miss a 61-yard field goal before halftime and Allgeier rip off a 63-yard touchdown run with 1:35 left in the third, the late defensive penalty became the play that reopened everything.
The awkward part is that the game had already been full of small breaks that mattered. Joey Porter Jr. was called for defensive holding late in the second quarter, went down awkwardly and headed straight to the sideline, then later the Cowboys tried to manage the clock after recovering a fumble at the Arizona 47 with 11 seconds left in the half. Those moments never mattered as much as the one on Gary, because his penalty did not just add yards. It changed a fourth-and-10 into a fresh series and gave Arizona the chance to finish a drive that should have died short of the line to gain.
That is how the Cowboys-Cardinals series produced yet another unreal finish, and why this loss will be remembered less for the scoreboard than for the one defensive snap that handed Arizona new life. The Cowboys let a 14-point fourth-quarter lead and a 10-point lead in the final two minutes slip away, and the late hit on Gary is the moment that made the collapse feel inevitable.
