The Cowboys just dropped to 1-2 after an ugly, one-sided road loss to the Chicago Bears. While it is their second loss of the season, it’s the first one where the team looked bad and its followers felt wholly demoralized. For head coach Brian Schottenheimer, it presents a new challenge to get his guys back up off the ground after being pummeled into it.
It didn’t feel like this after the season-opening loss to the Eagles. The Cowboys went into Philadelphia as the underdogs, still reeling from the Micah Parsons trade, and nearly hung a loss on the defending champs. Dallas walked out of that game with more respect than they took in. And while they needed overtime and all sorts of heroics to fight off the lowly Giants last week, the team and its coach got credit for showing resilience and gutting out a win.
But this one? It was a soul stealer.
It all started with that Javonte Williams fumble. After forcing a three-and-out on the Bears’ opening drive, even knocking them backward two yards, Williams took his first carry for seven yards and then rumbled for 22 more on the next one. The day was looking good, the sun was shining bright, and 2-1 felt like an eventuality.
But just before going out of bounds on that 22-yarder, Williams had the ball taken away by Chicago’s Tyrique Stevenson. It wasn’t even a struggle; Stevenson ran up and snatched it like Deebo (not Samuel) ripping the chain off Red’s neck. And from there, all that was good and green turned to blackened ash. The Bears scored 14 points on two big plays, reigniting the defensive nightmare of last week, while CeeDee Lamb was lost to injury on the next Dallas possession.
Unlike last week with the Giants’ deep bombs, the Cowboys didn’t get back up from the Bears’ offensive haymakers. They seemed listless in the second half, which is why we’re all sitting in the dust from this one with a far different feeling in our tummies.
Oddly enough, it all makes sense on paper. Dallas traded away its best defensive player a week before the season, then lost its second-best (DaRon Bland) to injury after Week 1. We’re also waiting on the 2025 debut of DeMarvion Overshown, who may actually be our best defender now, but that won’t be until November at best. Oh, and the guy we got back in the Parsons trade? Kenny Clark? He also missed with an ankle injury.
Not only has the talent level gone down, but the current fit of Matt Eberflus’ scheme and the available personnel just isn’t working. Trevon Diggs, Kenneth Murray, and Donovan Wilson aren’t zone guys. And against a guru like Ben Johnson, whose Lions offense dominated Eberflus’ Bears defense during their years together in the NFC North, this broken version in Dallas had little chance.
We can’t understate the impact that losing Lamb had on this one, either. The timing was bad at any point, but especially after that first big Bears offensive play following Williams’ fumble. Dallas was already dazed, and that was a rib-breaking punch. And now, more than anything else that happened on Sunday, the effect will likely handicap the Cowboys against Green Bay and perhaps the Jets and Panthers from there.
So yeah, bad week to be Brian Schottenheimer. Not only do he and Klayton Adams have to figure out how to ruin Micah Parsons’ return, but they’ll almost certainly have to do it without Lamb. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s got to be worried about the other side of the ball sabotaging anything they can accomplish offensively. And with plenty of media members and fans ready to yell “I told you so” about his being hired in the first place, the pressure is rising quickly on Schotty.
This is a different kind of “Welcome to the NFL” moment for Schottenheimer. He’s been around a long time and seen plenty, but never in the big chair. It’s his first time having to coach his team through a demoralizing loss, and perhaps feelings of futility about the season ahead. How his team responds to this new level of adversity will be telling, and may decide how the rest of the season unfolds.
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