The Cowboys may have won on Thursday night, but they still feel like a team with a lot of issues.
With their Week 4 win over the Giants, the Dallas Cowboys preserved a far more palatable 2-2 record for the first quarter of their season. But while that record superficially says they’re an average team, the truth of how we got here says otherwise. This doesn’t feel like a .500 team and the next few games could make that clear on every level.
Apologies to Bill Parcells, but in this case the record doesn’t really tell the story about who the Cowboys are. Even in Thursday night’s victory we saw Dallas make poor game-management decisions, fail to execute consistently on offense, and get worked by New York’s passing. That opponent wasn’t good enough to make us pay with a loss, but it doesn’t change that Dallas’ performance would’ve resulted in defeat against the majority of NFL teams.
Oddly enough, the Cowboys have won their two road games and lost two at home. Those victories were against two of the worst teams in the league right now. While Dallas bullied Cleveland in Week 1, thanks largely to several injuries across the Browns’ offensive line, they hardly looked dominant in New York. Even the lowly Giants could’ve won that game with better quarterback play and a more competent officiating crew.
Meanwhile, Dallas’ home losses have been far more revealing. The Saints exposed the Cowboys’ defensive weaknesses and negated their strengths with a smart strategic attack. The Ravens didn’t have to do anything fancy, just overpowering Dallas with their run game and Lamar Jackson’s athletic gifts. For the most part, both Baltimore and New Orleans did what they wanted when they wanted.
For the last three weeks, the Cowboys have consistently looked outcoached. When CeeDee Lamb isn’t getting it done with his superstar ability, average defensive backs are able to shut down Dallas’ other receivers because routes are predictable and uninspired. Defensively, the Cowboys just gave up 23 catches to New York’s two most predictable targets in Malik Nabers and Wan’Dale Robinson.
Again, a better team than the Giants would’ve beaten the Cowboys Thursday night. And better teams are on the way with Pittsburgh, Detroit, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Philadelphia making up Dallas’ next five opponents. Dodging a 1-3 record with this last win may have felt good for the moment, but nobody will care if Dallas is 2-7 by midseason.
Even if you were a loud decrier of the Cowboys’ offseason decisions, you probably didn’t expect them to be this weakened to start the year. Granted, we didn’t know DaRon Bland would be out. But his absence has nothing to do with the lack of offensive cohesion or the issues on the defensive front.
Some players have surprisingly regressed while others aren’t taking the next step forward. Even if changing from Dan Quinn to Mike Zimmer was naturally going to cause shifts on defense, so far it feels like it’s made some guys worse without elevating others. Right now the sum feels lesser than its parts, and that’s only going to get uglier with Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence likely missing time.
The hardest thing about all of this is the reality that there’s not much to do about it at this point. We have the players we have, so now it’s up to Zimmer, Mike McCarthy, and Brian Schottenheimer to come up with better ways to utilize them. Maybe there’s some hope of that on defense, where we saw marked improvement from Mazi Smith in New York and another exciting display from DeMarvion Overshown. But on offense, it feels like we’re now asking McCarthy and Schottenheimer to adapt in ways they may not be capable of.
If this feels like the way someone would talk after a loss rather than a win, that’s kind of the whole point. Dallas won that last game for little other reason than because the New York Giants are one of the worst teams in the NFL. All things considered since Week 1, you could argue that Dallas is much closer to being 0-4 than 2-2 based on what we’ve seen so far. We’ve been lucky to have two cupcakes on the schedule to start the year, but the next several teams are going to make us eat our veggies. Unless something miraculous happens during this 10-day break, the upcoming schedule isn’t going to taste good.
