Cowboys third visit to Panthers since 2018 inspires very little excitement

The Cowboys have played their way into making this week’s game in Carolina feel pretty irrelevant.

For the second consecutive season, the Dallas Cowboys will visit the Carolina Panthers for a late season matchup that feels like a bit of a footnote. The year-to-year nature of the NFL will be on full display this Sunday in Charlotte, as the home Panthers are actually favorites to beat the Cowboys for just the sixth time in franchise history. Both teams come into this game with a losing record with Dallas at 5-8 and Carolina 3-10, but even the three wins the Panthers have so far is progress from the 1-8 record they had coming into last season’s Week 11 date with the Cowboys. The Cowboys beat the Panthers for their third of what would be six consecutive losses, their second such losing streak of the season, as they finished 2-15. Conversely, the Cowboys used the win to begin a new win streak that lasted five games before December road losses at Buffalo and Miami.

The Cowboys relied on Dan Quinn’s takeaway-fueled defense to pull away in last year’s win at the Panthers. A DaRon Bland pick-six and strip sack that led to a Brandon Aubrey field goal both in the fourth quarter separated Dallas on the scoreboard for a 33-10 win. The Panthers had threatened at the start of the second half with a touchdown drive that put them within 17-10, but it was all Cowboys the rest of the afternoon.

The Cowboys do not have that type of opportunistic defense this season in the first year under Mike Zimmer, and is only further hampered by injuries coming into Week 15 after the devastating loss of Demarvion Overshown last Monday night against the Bengals. It may actually be Dallas’ previous visit to Carolina in 2018 that feels more pertinent to this Sundays.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to the site of the third youngest team in the NFL with the Panthers.

In a season opening loss, the Cowboys managed just 232 yards and eight points in a 16-8 defeat. The Cowboys offense crossed into Panthers territory just four times with a punt, missed field goal, and turnover on downs on three of these drives. Allen Hurns had the team’s only reception of 20 yards or more, and Dak Prescott was sacked six times. It was a miserable start to a season where the Cowboys began with a wide-receiver-by-committee approach and lost in Carolina for the first time since a 2003-04 Wild Card game. Jason Garrett’s team, in his eighth season and fourth under offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, would alternate wins and losses starting at 0-1 for the first seven weeks of the season. The week eight bye became a turning point for the season as the Cowboys reacted to not being nearly good enough in the pass game and traded for then-Raiders wide receiver Amari Cooper.

Cooper made his debut on a Monday night against the Titans the following week, and despite getting his first receiving touchdown right away, the Cowboys lost their second straight game for the first time all year. It would be their last loss until an ugly Week 15 shutout at the Colts, with former Cowboys coach Matt Eberflus in charge of the Indianapolis defense at the time. Cooper completely changed the tenor of the season and helped the Cowboys reach the Divisional playoffs for the second time under Prescott.

If it weren’t for the Cowboys getting shutout for the first three quarters of the season at the Panthers, managing just one Ezekiel Elliott touchdown for the whole game, who knows what happens on the trading block for a team not exactly known for being aggressive in player acquisition.

No such in-season saving grace of a trade is coming for the Cowboys in 2024, regardless of what happens against a Dave Canales’ Panthers team playing much better football as of late. Neither is anything close to a trip to the same Divisional round of the playoffs they have been in just once under McCarthy, with a loss at the 49ers. The only thing close to the Cowboys realizing they were not properly equipped at wide receiver in 2018 that’s occurred for this current team is realizing their running-back-by-committee approach was not working to start the season, but this also didn’t come in nearly enough time to save the season. Rico Dowdle has looked much better as the team’s true lead back, and will go for his third straight 100 yard game against a Panthers team that’s allowed 300 more rushing yards than the next worst team in the NFL this season.

One team has given up more rushing touchdowns than the Panthers though, and that would be the Cowboys. With no teams on their bye and a slate full of compelling games starting this Sunday, the Cowboys do not find themselves in one of them.

Dallas is four games away from having to decide the fate of a fifth-year head coach and second-year play-caller. Based on the futility this team has gone through from the start, the expectation is that a mass exodus of coaches starting with McCarthy at the top is the first thing the front office can do to show they’re serious about proving the 2024 performance is below standards. It will be a change of pace from the long leash the Garrett and Linehan regime received, with the 2018 Amari Cooper season going a long way in at least saving their jobs past that season. The disappointing playoff loss to the Rams in 2018 was the end of Linehan’s time with the team, and missing the playoffs entirely the next season marked Garrett’s last as head coach. The Cowboys must shorten the amount of time it takes them to learn such lessons, with 2024 being a very long lesson in how to set up a team for failure from the jump.

The Cowboys are still vying to surpass McCarthy’s worst record with the Cowboys which came in his first year at 6-10 in the “Covid season”. They may very well tie the wins in technically upset fashion against the Panthers, but face a much harder task in getting over the six-win mark to end the season against the Buccaneers, Eagles, and Commanders. All three teams are currently in playoff positions.

The remaining kickoffs the Cowboys have on the season will come and go amidst the rush of holiday season, and just after New Year’s Day it will all be over. It is hard to remember a time where gamedays felt like such a back burner item in the proceedings of the work ahead for a Cowboys team being tested for depth at nearly every position, and ill-prepared for this attrition at most of them. This week’s opponent being one the Cowboys are playing for just the 17th time in franchise history surely doesn’t help, although there is a strange amount of recent history between these teams that’s more relevant. Even the constantly-mentioned 2015 season in comparison to this 2024 one has a significant bookmark in a chapter against the Panthers, with Carolina being the opponent Tony Romo was officially lost for the season against in a Thanksgiving loss.

The Panthers can’t deliver the same type of knockout blow to the Cowboys this time around, but they can look to find better fortune in one-score games, coming in having lost four straight by a combined 15 points. The Cowboys are 4-4 in one-score games this season, which their last three have been. Win or lose, the best thing the Cowboys can hope for is they get out of Carolina without anymore injuries that impact the offseason or even start of 2025. Such is life for a Cowboys team playing in what could be their last early kickoff window of the season.