Dak Prescott Should Not Be the Scapegoat of the 2025 Cowboys – Mark Heaney, Inside The Star
The Cowboys defense is hardly even giving their offense a chance to be competitive right now.
If yesterday’s game and these first three weeks in total have taught us anything, it should be to stop the blame and focus on Prescott in favor of the real problems facing this slumping franchise. Let’s get serious, folks.
The Top Problem: No Defense = Few Wins, No Matter What The Offense Does
Simply put, when your defense is bad enough, it really does not matter what the offense does; you are not going to overcome the weak unit all the way to the playoffs.
That is what the 2025 Dallas Cowboys are running into.
At the end of the day, the defense on this team is so poor that the rare 40-point game will need to become commonplace if the Cowboys want to come away with wins. Unfortunately, that’s just not realistic in the NFL.
Dallas got lit up by Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson on Sunday, and that’s an offense that had struggled mightily heading into Week 3.
If the Chicago Bears could outright abuse the Cowboys’ defense as badly as they did, imagine what good, great, or elite offenses can and will do.
Cowboys’ Prescott: Offense not up to standard but admits, ‘I don’t get to play defense’ – Todd Brock, The Cowboys Wire
QB1 still believes in the Cowboys offense, despite the pressure they’re under and now being without CeeDee Lamb.
That the Cowboys defense couldn’t get a stop in the critical moments made things tough. But with only a three-and-out from the Dallas offense breaking up the Bears’ scoring drives before intermission, their lone third-quarter possession going nowhere, and interceptions halting their final three drives, Prescott knows his unit also didn’t have any answers.
Yet he refused to let that shake his belief in his guys.
“I wouldn’t say anything in this game is demoralizing,” he told reporters. “It’s hard. It’s frustrating. But I love that. That’s what life’s about: adversity, fighting back, not being in the best position and trusting yourself and trusting others around you. And I think, just as a team, we’ve got to be better in that position. We’ve got to be better when things get hard.
“I believe in our offense and I don’t think people can stop us. I think you can even go back and look at these possessions. We stopped ourselves. … I don’t know if they’ve done a lot to stop us, honestly. And that’s what’s frustrating.”
The Cowboys were indeed supremely frustrating to watch- on both sides of the ball- on Sunday. But Prescott knows that he can only worry about affecting his side of the equation, as both the offense and defense search for answers before the season gets out of hand.
“I don’t get to play defense. That’s not how this game works. And the guys on offense don’t. We’ve got to play offense to the best of our ability regardless.”
George Pickens could be the Cowboys’ top option at wide receiver for multiple weeks now.
Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb could miss 3-4 weeks with a high left ankle sprain, Todd Archer of ESPN reports.
Executive vice president Stephen Jones announced the diagnosis Monday morning on 105.3 The Fan. He did not announce a prognosis.
The Cowboys will keep Lamb on their active roster in hopes that he will miss fewer than four games, which is the minimum number of games he would miss on injured reserve.
Lamb injured his left ankle with 8:39 left in the first quarter on a running play that didn’t even count, because of offsetting penalties. Bears linebacker Noah Sewell inadvertently rolled over Lamb’s left ankle on the first-quarter tackle, with Lamb’s ankle violently twisting underneath Sewell’s body.
The Cowboys scheme is not sound under Matt Eberflus, and their banged up secondary has no answers.
Stock Down: Matt Eberflus
Personally I did not put a lot of stock into the narrative of Flus returning to Chicago to see a Bears organization that fired him in the middle of last season. The NFL sees people fired midseason all of the time. But as one user on Twitter put it so eloquently, it is a tough scene for Flus to get destroyed by a quarterback who looked largely dysfunctional under his watch. To be clear, Flus is a defensive mind and that context matters, but the point at large is difficult to ignore.
Forgetting that entire discussion point, the Cowboys defense made Caleb Williams look incredible. He posted arguably the best day of his career, he literally tied his career high in terms of touchdown passes, and he was not sacked a single time.
The day was made worse for Flus when the New York Giants looked moribund once more on Sunday night, emphasizing that Dallas was the antidote to their offensive woes.
Stock Down: Trevon Diggs
We should acknowledge that he appears to be playing hurt. That matters, but he is playing nonetheless.
Trevon Diggs was once a great cornerback for this team and but it looks like those days are behind us. He was among the weakest points on the defense on Sunday in Chicago and was being targeted with regularity. Who could blame the Bears when they were doing what was working.
The Cowboys appeared ready to acknowledge that this is Diggs’ last season with the team with how Jerry Jones publicly lamented him at the beginning of training camp. Everything involved here feels left-footed and the play on the field is representative of that.
Stock Down: Kaiir Elam
We have spoken a lot about how the Cowboys love former first-round picks and they have a track record of uncovering solid production in that realm. It stood to reason that Kaiir Elam could be of that ilk.
Three games in that certainly does not look to be the case. Elam has really struggled in the secondary and was equally picked on by Caleb Williams (a crazy sentence to type).
DaRon Bland has been out and Elam’s role has therefore not been exactly what it was supposed to be. None of that helps the play on the field, though.
Stock Down: Donovan Wilson
Dan Quinn revitalized the safety position for the Cowboys and it was such an incredible three-year run. Within that success was a career turnaround for Donovan Wilson as he thrived under DQ.
Wilson looks lost on defense. He is a hard hitter and that is great, but he is among those getting most beat in coverage by all sorts of pass-catchers from every team the Cowboys have played to date. He had the moment of heroism against the Giants when Russell Wilson chucked up an arm punt, but that was pretty hard to mess up.
It is one thing to get continually beat in the passing game, but Wilson is not enforcing anything on the ground either. There are a lot of weak points on this defense so saying one is bigger than another feels unfair, but if we are looking for that spot it might be here.
The Cowboys haven’t even executed the basics of their zone defense so far, prompting Brian Schottenheimer to call for a change.
Schottenheimer says Cowboys need to ‘simplify’ things on defense
Although he didn’t seem to intend it as a jab at his defensive coordinator, Schottenheimer was asked about the Cowboys’ communication issues on defense following the loss to the Chicago Bears, and he delivered a noteworthy response.
“It wasn’t [fixed after Week 2],” Schottenheimer admitted. “That’s coaching, it starts with us, we’ve got to do a better job, simplify a few things, maybe.”
It might not be the most explicit or loudest of messages, but Schottenheimer saying the defense may need to be simplified three weeks into the season is a sign of how bad things are going for Eberflus’ unit.
“The one thing that we knew going into this game is they would challenge us with motions and shifts, and they did that,” Schottenheimer added. “Gotta tighten the coverage down for sure, we’ll take a hard look at it. Maybe it is to simplify things.”
Again, some slack should be cut for the coach, considering the tough hand he was dealt. The Cowboys simply lack talent at multiple levels of the defense. But at some point, adjustments need to be made.
It’s on Eberflus to not blitz, to not change up coverages, or play closer to the line of scrimmage. Let’s see if anything changes in Week 4. For now, we know the head coach wants to see something different.
Clowney set to debut for Cowboys against Packers – Patrik Walker, DallasCowboys.com
After failing to record a single sack against the Bears, at least some help is on the way for the Cowboys pass rush.
“Yes, we fully expect him to be able to come in and help,” said executive vice president and director of player personnel Stephen Jones to 105.3 The Fan. “We’re gonna look at this film very closely and seeing exactly where our shortfalls are and seeing where we can do some things differently to have success. I certainly believe we have the coaching staff and the players to play good defense.”
Clowney, speaking in his first interview after signing his contract with the Cowboys, made it clear he was physically ready and hungry to take the field against the Bears, making it that much more likely he’ll be on the field against the Packers, as Jones confirmed.
Having been one of the best teams in the league in pressures generated through the first two weeks of the season, they were unable to keep that momentum going against Williams and, to date, the Cowboys have but three sacks, tied for second-worst in the NFL in that category, and one belongs to Pro Bowl defensive tackle Kenny Clark in the middle of the defensive line.
That said, it makes perfect sense to see the Cowboys saddling up for Clowney’s debut.
0 CommentsSee More:
