Cowboys get struggling Texans team in first of 2 Monday night games left on season

Will the Cowboys get their first home win of the season on Monday night?

The Dallas Cowboys do not have much left to play for on the 2024 season. This has been the case at really any point throughout their current four-game losing streak, starting with a 47-9 home loss to the Detroit Lions and most recently being extended with another blowout home loss, 34-6, to the Philadelphia Eagles. The loss to the Eagles was the first start for QB Cooper Rush, with Dak Prescott officially out for the season, only adding to how much this season has slipped away. Even for those that believed all along this year was about resetting the roster and the start of a rebuild, the Cowboys have found a way to be worse than even these non-contending expectations. They have not scored a touchdown in eight straight quarters playing at home to drop their AT&T Stadium record to 0-4. This record will again be on the line Monday night when the Cowboys host a Houston Texans team that’s also lost three of their last four.

The Cowboys are still not favorites to get their first home win of the season in primetime, but may find themselves asking if not now, when? This Week 11 game will mark a significant date for the Cowboys as it is their second-to-last primetime game of the season. Their on-field performances this year have hardly been worthy of the national audiences this team feels they always deserve, and they’ve filled this void in a way only the Cowboys can with distracting stories about curtains on stadium windows and fake belief in a slew of coaches playing out the final year of their contract.

The Cowboys home opponents following the Texans are the Giants on Thanksgiving, Bengals, Buccaneers, and Commanders. All but the Giants have a better record than the Cowboys currently. This Monday night versus the Texans needs to be a showing of Mike McCarthy’s team looking prepared and ready to take advantage of any area they can gain an advantage.

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Pushing the ball downfield has been a struggle for the Texans offense ever since losing Stefon Diggs for the season. They are 12-32 on third down over the last two weeks, losses at the Jets and against the Lions. In that most recent loss against the Lions, the Texans generated five takeaways on defense and still blew a 23-7 first half lead by getting shutout in the second half with two turnovers of their own, four punts, and a missed field goal. The Lions won on a last second field goal 26-23, spoiling the Texans’ chance to be the only AFC South team to win in Week 10 and further their grip on the division.

Going into Monday night, the Texans still hold a two-game lead in the loss column over the Colts as the only other team within striking distance of catching them. This cushion, paired with the incredibly low-hanging fruit that is the current state of disarray of the Cowboys, has the home team in this matchup catching strays on the network that will air the game.

As the lens through which fans and followers of America’s Team has changed on a weekly basis though, the matchups are there for this Monday night to somehow be an even higher level of concern should the Cowboys be blown out again. With a win, Dallas still shouldn’t be taken seriously in a crowded NFC playoff race, but they can at least feel better about not risking entering the season’s final month of December without a home win.

The Texans’ best win is at home against the Bills, but their other five wins aren’t much to write home about by way of beating the Colts twice already, Bears, Jaguars, and Patriots. Their 41-21 win over the Patriots in Week 6 that extended their longest win streak of the season to three games was the only time they’ve broken the 30 point mark this year. C.J. Stroud has been sacked 35 times this season, the third most in the league.

In a league starved for more contending teams, the 2024 Texans are one of the easiest teams to overrate. They were anointed as being incredibly far ahead of schedule last year with rookie sensation Stroud at QB, and were aggressive enough in free agency to back this up and try to be a real threat in the conference in Stroud’s second year. With the AFC being dominated by the Chiefs, Bills, Ravens, and Steelers so far, there is room for another team to join the mix, and the Texans can hardly afford a loss to the 3-6 Cowboys if they hope to be that team.

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In most of the areas the Texans have been inconsistent, the Cowboys have actually been consistent all year – consistently bad. They are the second-worst team in the league at giving the ball away and third-worst in differential. They go through long stretches on offense where managing a single first down feels comically hard, and the ensuing backbreaking play surrendered by a tired defense can be seen coming on a weekly basis.

A head coach that has wanted a physical football team that can run the ball and rest the defense is now at the end of his contract with the team, coaching a side that does not do a single one of these things even close to well.

What the Cowboys can do well on Monday night is remain in the game, at bare minimum, long enough for ESPN’s telecast to not turn into an extended talk show about how bad things are. They can continue to learn what core players they have still playing at a high enough level to evaluate certain position groups honestly.

The best example of this from last week’s loss to the Eagles was Micah Parsons’ return to the defensive front, and how it made the entire front four look much more formidable throughout the game. Can the Cowboys get the same kind of useful look at their wide receivers or offensive line against a defense that’s allowed the second most passing TDs and same yards per carry in the run game as them?

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After Monday night, the Cowboys will play two more games in the blink of an eye over a ten-day stretch against the Commanders and Giants. By the time fans look up, there will be just 20 quarters of Cowboys football left until 2025. If there is such thing as a sense of urgency that exists to make any of this game time useful right now, it better manifest itself in primetime against the Texans.