In the NFL, you take any win, no matter how many warts it has. And make no mistake, there were warts all over the Dallas Cowboys’ 34-30 win over the winless Houston Texans. From the way the defense struggled at so many points in the game to the anemic run offense outside of the redzone, there clearly is much to work on.
Now they face another winless team, the 0-4 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This comes on a short week as it is on Thursday Night Football. With so many questions still to be answered, here
are some areas Sean Martin and Tom Ryle have concerns.
Tom – Some context is important here. By beating the Texans, the Cowboys kept themselves in the thick of the NFC East race. The New York Giants are somehow keeping at the head of the division without Jaxson Dart, the Washington Commanders are trailing everyone else but hope to have Jayden Daniels back this week, and it is with great sadness that I observed what can only be called a meltdown by the Philadelphia Eagles against the Los Angeles Rams that may bode ill for them.
The playoffs are hardly out of reach for Dallas at this point. But some things really need to change.
And forgive me for venting a bit about something. I didn’t like the whole ‘Greatest Offense There Is’ idea from the start. Not only was it unoriginal and clumsy, it seemed to have been created while willfully ignoring something very important. Yes, the Cowboys offense was tearing it up all offseason and leading up to the regular season. But it appears Dak Prescott put out of his mind it was looking so good working against a defense that was simply pitiful last season. And the first four games have shown that the supposed improvements during the offseason have not panned out as well as we were hoping.
It leaves the offense still having to carry this team. That was certainly the case in Houston, but it was just half the offense, or more precisely, it was the Dak-to-CeeDee Lamb connection being on absolute fire. Yes, Javontae Williams scored three touchdowns, but he still mustered a paltry 3.3 yards per carry.
That, to me, is not a sustainable formula for making any kind of a playoff run.
Sean – Well, it’s good to be talking to you after a win Tom. I wish I could say it was 2-2 over the weekend, but I’m sure we’ve all seen what happened at this point to my Bobcats at Idaho. You make a great point about the GOTI offense for the Cowboys, and Prescott pushed that further by saying he expected a blowout win against the Texans. All we can say about that now, is that at least he came up clutch when it mattered and the ball was firmly in the offense’s court. We have CeeDee Lamb’s historic day to thank for that.
I think we learned with the Cowboys this week, and in many other places around the league, that we’re at a point where it’s important to not get too high or too low. This win had all of the thumbprints the Cowboys would like on it, Schottenheimer redeeming himself and calling the right plays in crunch time, the defense getting some key pressures, overcoming two missed field goals and a deficit, and winning late.
There’s going to be talk of the “culture” being fixed because of this, of the Cowboys righting all their wrongs, almost as if Brazil didn’t happen. We have to pair these last two games together, all of the crazy highs and lows, and try to paint a more realistic picture of where this team is at with a short week to get back to work. Mix it all together and a winning record before we even get to the weekend is still in sight, so sign me up for that.
Having the intensity to hand a winless, desperate team another loss was nicely done though, and exactly what the Cowboys will need to do again as the headline for the Buccaneers is that they also fell to 0-4 on Sunday.
Tom – The problem is that I’m not sure what it really proves to get wins over winless teams, especially close ones like Sunday. I know that on any given Sunday something something, but Dallas needs to really assert itself. Tampa Bay offers a great opportunity for just that. But if they don’t breeze to a comfortable win, then we have to worry very much about what will happen when the competition is more formidable. And after facing the Texans and Buccaneers back to back, that is exactly what is coming.
A win is a win, of course, but unless we see the offense really clicking without Prescott and Lamb, or maybe George Pickens have to be superheroes, and the defense shows it can put the clamps on a team that is having its own struggles, we should have a sense of trepidation. A strong showing against Tampa Bay would not only make us feel better about the overall performance of the team. It could set Dallas up to be a real challenger to win the division and get back to the playoffs.
Sean – I am going to disagree with the general premise of style points mattering right now, but the thing I can’t possibly disagree with is that this team still has a lot of work to do. Luckily, so does every team right now as we’re a long way from knowing who will be the last one standing in February. We’ve seen Cowboys teams that won with style points in the regular season before not even make it to January, and the league is on a heater when it comes to games being decided by one score across the board right now.
The Texans win can’t ease all of our woes about playing better competition, but the level of competition the Houston defense gave the Dallas offense in the first half sure was challenging, and they built a ten-point lead off of it. Within the same 60 minutes, the Cowboys turned it around and won, so maybe that will be something we look back on for evidence of getting it done against top defenses. I also think the easiest room for improvement to play even better on offense is the play-calling consistency right now, which is fixable if there’s still trust to be had in Schottenheimer.
That trust will be back down to near-zero if the Cowboys are upset by the Bucs. The cruel reality is that it also won’t skyrocket back up with a win against this very depleted Tampa squad, but that Todd Bowles defense is going to bring pressure and play a bit reckless I think. The offense will need to show poise yet again.
It’s a bye week on Saturday for the Bobcats, and a free Sunday for us Cowboys fans to watch other teams. Should be a nice weekend if they handle business on Thursday!
