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For the first time in well over a decade, the Dallas Cowboys were swept by their fiercest division rival in Philadelphia. Losing 41-7 to the Eagles on Sunday afternoon, the Cowboys allowed the home team to start the celebration for winning the NFC East early despite also playing with a backup quarterback. Any semblance of the Cowboys playing complementary football that made them a feel-good story in recent weeks was nowhere to be found after Dallas fell behind 7-0 despite starting with the ball. In his third career start against the Eagles, Cooper Rush was intercepted for the fourth time on the seventh play of the game. He would finish with multiple interceptions for just the second time in his career, both times against the Eagles on the road.
Faced with their first attempt on third down of the game, C.J. Gardner-Johnson may as well have been the intended receiver instead of Brandin Cooks as he caught Rush’s throw and took it back 69 yards for the game’s first touchdown.
Gardner-Johnson would have another interception in the second quarter that led to the Eagles scoring on the last play of the first half, more than putting a Jalen Tolbert touchdown behind them and going to the locker room up 24-7. The Eagles have been built all year to get on top of teams and control games with the lead, something they were desperate to get back to after blowing a 14-point lead on the road at the Commanders last week. Philadelphia did so while missing not only starting QB Jalen Hurts, but later in the game backup Kenny Pickett, who got the start but was injured.
Third-string Eagles QB Tanner McKee came in for the first time in his NFL career as a 2023 sixth-round draft pick. The Cowboys defense allowed two of his first four ever attempts to go for touchdowns to A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. It was Smith that broke this game wide open for the Eagles, winning just about every one-on-one matchup against Cowboys reserve cornerback Andrew Booth to average 20 yards a catch on six receptions for 120 yards and two scores.
Now locked into the number two seed in the NFC with a statement win to clinch the division for the second time in three years, the Eagles became the latest team to remind the Cowboys who they really are this season. The Cowboys had put on a valiant effort to rewrite their season-long narrative in recent weeks with wins against the Commanders and Giants, a close loss to the Bengals, and wins against the Panthers and Bucs. The problem is, in a conference on the cusp of having a potential 14-win Lions or Vikings team be a road wild card team as the five seed in the playoffs, none of these recent Cowboys results have come against the playoff contenders they swore they’d be themselves in 2024. If it is the Lions that earn the NFC’s top seed, the Cowboys will have lost to the top two conference seeds by a combined score of 88 to 16 this year.
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There will be very few positives the Cowboys can take from yet another loss where the turnover differential gave them no chance. The fight and leadership they were showing on the field despite being eliminated from the playoff picture two weeks ago was absent, at the same time star receiver CeeDee Lamb was out of the lineup to provide this and more on offense. The defense had a few flashes in the first half following the Cowboys tying the game at seven, but found themselves the victim of yet another opponent that knew how to target their weakest link in the secondary. The Cowboys offense has not had this same ability with Mike McCarthy as play-caller, especially against a Vic Fangio defense that frustrated them for the third time in two seasons. Fangio was with the Dolphins last season for a 22-20 win over the Cowboys, and now was a big part of sweeping two games against Cooper Rush without much push back.
This loss also ensures the Cowboys will finish with a losing record for the first time since 2020, McCarthy’s debut season. Dallas will be looking to close the season with their fourth NFC East win by sweeping the Commanders at home. They have not won less than four games against their division, currently sitting on a sweep of the last-place Giants and road win at the Commanders, also since that 2020 Covid season. Setting expectations for McCarthy’s first season under those circumstances was difficult then, but didn’t have to be so difficult here in 2024. It may feel like ancient forgotten history that this Cowboys team was supposed to be a viable NFC contender to keep their core in place. With all that’s left to play for being avoiding another harsh reminder of how much they missed this mark before the offseason, all of the Cowboys failures throughout this season were on full display in front of hostile fans in Philadelphia.
For the penultimate time this season, here are a few further notes on the Cowboys 41-7 loss to the Eagles, their worst since week 17 of 2008 to Philadelphia.
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- On both first half possessions that ended in interceptions for the Cowboys offense, they had plays prior to it for first downs to Brandin Cooks. Acting as the team’s top receiver without Lamb, Cooks was able to run sharp routes and come back to the ball for a few easy completions for Rush. Cooks looked explosive in and out of his breaks and was able to sell vertical routes before creating separation to take advantage of a Fangio defense that wants to take away space downfield as their top priority.
The fact the Cowboys were not able to find any consistency at all in this area and make this a decent game to evaluate their receivers beyond Lamb was a letdown. Not creating any movement in the run game against a bigger Eagles front made this even harder.
There will be a ton of discussion from all angles of this blowout loss as to how it pertains to McCarthy’s future with the Cowboys. The most important thing that must be kept in mind through all of this is that the Cowboys need to be more dynamic on the perimeter to be taken more seriously as a real playoff threat anytime soon. It may be true that some teams overate this single aspect of the game when deciding the role their head coach will have in it, but underrating it with a team that’s already financially committed to Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb is a death wish. Dallas needs these two franchise players to be on the field deciding games as much as possible, and nothing they did without either against the Eagles inspired confidence that many of the pieces are in place elsewhere at WR, TE, or up front to help them do that without finding room to shake things up somewhere in the offensive equation.
Even the Cowboys’ lone scoring highlight in this game, Jalen Tolbert’s sixth touchdown of the season, was a gifted opportunity after an Eagles holding penalty on third down extended the drive. It was yet another third down Dallas invited themselves into with a second down and long run for Ezekiel Elliott. The Cowboys offense wasn’t expected or called upon to have a great outing against the Eagles, but one that didn’t lead directly to being run off the field would have been preferred by anyone with eyes on the future in the Dallas front office, instead seeing former OC Kellen Moore have his way with a Dallas defense given no chance from the start. This was a Cowboys team that’s lacked an identity due to injuries, a lack of depth, and a predictable reliance on rookies that ran into one of the most defined identity teams in the league this year, allowing the Eagles to exploit this fully for 60 minutes.
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- If there is one position group that can make a lasting impact on the season and provide hope for the future, even after this game, it is probably at linebacker. Former DC Dan Quinn did not leave this group in good shape after departing for the Commanders HC job, a team he’s now led to the playoffs in his first year with several former Cowboys defenders in the lineup. The Cowboys were getting by with converted safeties and extra defensive backs in place of traditional linebackers, something that had to change quickly when transitioning to Mike Zimmer this year. Zimmer reuniting with veteran Eric Kendricks as the Cowboys only consistently contributing free agent pick up has been a saving grace for the entire defense, but in this game Kendricks was helped along by rookie Marist Liufau as well. Liufau has been the next man up at LB following DeMarvion Overshown’s season-ending injury that is expected to sideline him for some if not all of next year. The Notre Dame product is taking full advantage of the opportunity in front of him, teaming up with Kendricks to force a three and out following Tolbert’s touchdown.
The Cowboys appeared to have some life in this game after getting another stop from Kendricks on third down the next time the Eagles had the ball. What Dallas is missing in the tandem of Kendricks and Liufau is the ability to affect the passer from the second level of their defense though. For one of the first times all season, the Cowboys looked desperate and not well-positioned when having to dial up pressure from other areas of the defense, even when trying to get to backup quarterbacks. One such corner blitz led to a Smith touchdown that put the Eagles ahead by ten, a lead that already felt insurmountable for the offense. A Jake Ferguson fumble on the next drive would eventually add three more points for the Eagles after Chauncey Golston shut down a drive that entered the red zone with a pass breakup. Whether it was field goals or touchdowns though, any points the Eagles put up while draining time off the clock went a very long way in icing this win for Philadelphia on a day where Dallas simply didn’t come to play in any of the three phases.
The Eagles and Cowboys have flip-flopped as division winners every year since 2021. The Cowboys being three games better at the start of this streak in ‘21 was the widest gap between these teams over that time. The Eagles will play on for a chance to go into the playoffs with a winning streak by beating the Giants. In doing so, they could have their own three-game gap on the Cowboys should they lose to the Commanders. Picking nearly any team from around the league to compare to the Cowboys right now would show Dallas lagging behind, but the Eagles specifically lapping them in this way should raise alarm bells around The Star.
The home team on Sunday in Philly proved they are infinitely better where it matters the most between the lines. It isn’t all that often a 41-7 score in the NFL doesn’t paint the full picture of which team was worlds better than their opponent on any given Sunday, but somehow this game felt like it always could have been worse for an uninterested Cowboys side.
