Let’s give this to Dallas: they always find a way to entertain.
Sunday’s 47-9 drubbing at the hands of the Lions may have felt more like watching The Substance than Love Is Blind, but seeing the Cowboys being beaten on their own home turf remains must-watch TV.
In the nearly 30 years since the Cowboys last won the Super Bowl, there have been plenty of lows. Sunday’s defeat, though, felt like a nadir. It was the team’s worst loss since 2010 – and the worst at home since before the days of Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith. Is now a good time to note that this game marked the 82nd birthday for team owner and general manager Jerry Jones?
Typically, Jones has to wait until January for his team’s annual meltdown. This year, he was treated to a horror show before Halloween.
It was not that long ago that the Cowboys had a whiff of perennial contenders. They had a talented, young roster, with playmakers on both sides of the ball. They struck gold in the draft with Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons, and looked ripe to bury some playoff demons. This defeat to the Lions leaves the Cowboys looking like a team who will be lucky to even reach the postseason. They’re 3-3 on the year, with close wins over the Giants and Steelers. Change two plays – a fumble here, a botched return there – and the Cowboys would be 1-5.
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The manner of the defeat on Sunday is more impactful than the loss itself. Detroit bullied the Cowboys, on offense and defense. Without the injured Parsons they could not pressure Jared Goff. A run defense that has struggled all season had no shot against the best offensive line in the NFL. Just as in the Week 3 defeat to the Ravens, the Cowboys were crushed upfront, unable to stop the run and incapable of wrapping a protective shield around Prescott. Any hope of a fightback ended on the first drive of the third quarter, with Goff finding Jameson Williams down the field for a 32-yard score. From there, Detroit spent the remainder of the game playing with their food, trying, in vain, to draw up a touchdown for one of their offensive linemen. It almost felt like bullying.
Losing is one thing. Being humiliated at home – again – in a season that the Cowboys entered with championship expectations is something bleaker.
In truth, it was a defeat five months in the making, with the seeds of the mess planted in the offseason. The Cowboys ducked out of free agency, betting on internal development and the draft. The result is a top-heavy roster lacking talent, one that relies on a handful of star players to drag the team through games. The NFL has never worked that way. Sure, stars put a team over the top in the playoffs, but teams with depth grind out wins in October and November. And depth is acquired in three ways: acing evaluations in free agency and the draft or having a coaching staff that can improve the players already on the roster.
Dallas bet on the latter, and it has taken only six weeks to prove the plan was a dud.
After last season’s playoff debacle, it was evident that the Cowboys had reached the end of a cycle. The offseason was a chance to reboot things, to either rejuvenate the roster or refresh the coaching staff. Jones opted for neither. The Cowboys locked in their prized assets and held on to head coach Mike McCarthy and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.
Jones’s plan, as far as one can be discerned, was to assemble the All-Grouch Avengers to run his team. After Dan Quinn bolted for the head coaching job in Washington in the offseason, Dallas brought Mike Zimmer back from retirement to run the defense. Adding Zimmer echoed the decisions to keep McCarthy and Schottenheimer. The theory was that there would be few bells and whistles to the scheme, but that the coaches would get the players to play tough, disciplined football. The standout players would add glitz, and the Cowboys would be on their way to another postseason.
Instead, the Cowboys look like a dinosaur fighting extinction. On offense, everything feels like hard work, with few ways for Prescott to rack up easy completions. On defense, the Cowboys are soft – a cardinal sin for a Zimmer-led group.
Plus, both units remain jarringly ill-disciplined. If it’s not a running back gliding through open lanes, it’s a busted coverage. If it’s not two receivers arriving in the same spot, it’s a pre-snap penalty.
The failure falls back on the man calling the shots. Jones is the team’s general manager in name only; he is not grinding the film and digging for players to build out the back end of the roster. But he signs off on the big calls. It was his decision to bring back McCarthy and Schottenheimer to run the offense. He signed off on bringing in Zimmer. It was his call to sit out free agency and to hand bumper extensions to Prescott and Lamb while holding money in reserve for a future Parsons contract.
This is the house that Jerry built – and Sunday showed that it is rotten.
MVP of the week
Jordan Love, quarterback, Green Bay Packers. One of the telltale signs of a serious contender is their ability to blow away inferior opponents. The Packers delivered on Sunday, rolling past an overmatched Arizona in a 34-14 win.
Green Bay’s defense was at its chaos-inducing best, forcing and recovering three fumbles. But it’s difficult to imagine the group will continue to force multiple turnovers every week. What looks sustainable, what feels sustainable is Jordan Love and the offense. Love tossed four touchdowns and threw for 258 yards against the Cardinals. He was accurate, decisive and peppered all areas of the field, successfully connecting with nine different targets.
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Arizona’s defense has been frisky this season by throwing a series of wacky looks at opposing quarterbacks to try to offset a lack of talent up front. Against Love, it didn’t matter. In his second season as a starter, Love is playing with a simmering self-assurance. Parts of the game that used to be hard for him – picking up pressures, attacking the middle of the field – look easy now. Pair that with his instinctive, playmaking magic, and you have a quarterback who has the answers to any test.
Stat of the week
594 yards. How about the Bucs? Tampa’s 594 yards of total offense in a 51-27 win over the Saints set a franchise record and is the most by any team in a game this season, topping the 550-yard effort from the Falcons last week against … the Bucs.
It was a performance fuelled by the team’s run game. After struggling to get anything going on the ground in the first four weeks of the season, Tampa’s rushing attack has come alive in the past two weeks. It exploded in New Orleans, with the Bucs totalling 277 total rushing yards. Everyone was in on the action: Sean Tucker hit 136 yards on 14 carries, Bucky Irving rushed for 81 yards on 14 carries, receiver Sterling Shepard added 31 yards on four carries and Baker Mayfield capped it off with 29 yards on three scrambles. For those keeping score at home, that’s an average of 7.9 yards (!) a carry. Not content with grinding out yards, they also hit four runs of 20 yards or more and two of 30 yards or more. In a sputtering NFC, the Bucs have the firepower to keep up with anybody.
Video of the week
Things are miserable in Cleveland. But amid the darkness, there is always Myles Garrett. The all-world defensive player was (largely) responsible for Cleveland’s only touchdown in a 20-16 loss to the Eagles, blocking a field goal that Rodney McLeod Jr scooped up for a score.
If the field-goal block looks familiar, it’s because it’s a carbon copy of the Giants’ decisive block against the Seahawks last week. It’s becoming a mini-trend – one that the league may look to legislate out of the game sooner rather than later. By rule, a player leaping over the line of scrimmage can’t touch the snapper. But teams have found a savvy workaround: one player drags the snapper down while another leaps into the vacated space. If executed properly, it’s close to unstoppable. And when you’re dealing with Garrett, it’s almost always going to be executed properly.
Elsewhere around the league
— The Texans handled their business with a comfortable 41-21 win over the Patriots. But there was good news for New England: Drake Maye threw more touchdowns in his first start (three) than Jacoby Brissett had all season (two). Maye’s debut went about as well as could be expected for a rookie behind the worst offensive line in the league, one facing off against a defense that leads the NFL in pressures. Maye threw two interceptions, including an ugly floater on his second drive of the game. But the rookie showed enough flashes to justify the team’s decision to bench Brissett. Maye created plays with his legs and delivered a 30-yard touchdown strike to Kayshon Boutte at the end of the first half. New England will lose plenty of games this season, but Maye’s first start offered a sliver of hope for the future.
— The Lions’ victory was marred by a serious injury to star edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson, who suffered a broken tibia. The episode affected Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, whose season was ended by a similar injury in 2020. Prescott offered Hutchinson words of encouragement as he was carted off the field. “It’s just something that I felt in the moment,” he said. “I’ll probably get his number from one of the guys in the locker room and reach out again … When you’re in that, it’s blurry. So I don’t even know if he heard [what I said]. Don’t care if he heard them. I understand where he was.”
— Chicago took an unusual approach with Caleb Williams this season. They threw the lot at the rookie quarterback, handing him full control of the offense while running one of the most expansive schemes in the league. It was ugly in the opening two weeks, but those early-season jitters appear to have drifted away. The offense came online in recent weeks by leaning into the run game and relying on Williams to throw the ball in rhythm. But on Sunday we were treated to the Williams who dazzled at USC, spinning magic outside the pocket. The Bears pasted a dejected-looking Jaguars team 35-16 in London, with Williams carving the Jacksonville defense up with his arm and legs. He threw for 226 yards and four touchdowns, tacking on an extra 56 yards with his legs. Williams has been efficient in recent weeks, mastering the pro part of professional quarterback play. Sunday, against a ragged Jags defense, was the first glimpse of the player Williams can become: a quarterback who can excel in or out of structure.
— The Jaguars will hang around in London for another week before their game against the Patriots at Wembley. It has become something of a trend for a coach under fire to be fired after an ugly overseas loss. What will Jacksonville do with Doug Pederson? The defeat to the Bears was a someone-should-get-fired kind of performance, a limp, lifeless outing that showed a staff out of ideas. But back-to-back weeks overseas will make the decision tricky. Will Jacksonville fly Pederson back to Florida while they stay in London? Will they keep him for another week, thinking that they should squeeze by a poor Patriots team? Either way, it will be an awkward few days at the breakfast buffet.
— How about Michael Pittman Jr? Last week, it was reported that the Colts’ wide receiver would be placed on injured reserve with a back injury. But Pittman told the team that he wanted to play on Sunday before making a decision. In a messy 20-17 win over the Titans, it was the receiver who was the difference maker. Pittman pulled in only three receptions, but he came up big in must-have-it situations. Joe Flacco found Pittman on a jump ball to give the Colts a go-ahead score before the receiver grabbed a late reception to ice the game. There is toughness – and then there is snagging a catch in traffic with a lingering back injury
