The Dallas Cowboys are at a low point in a 2025 season that’s been a roller coaster, and one that is destined to head back into the station after three more games against the Chargers, Commanders, and Giants. There is greater than a 99% chance that after the final ups and downs of these three games on Brian Schottenheimer’s first ride as head coach of America’s Team, the thrills that fans will be seeking will shift in nature dramatically from competing in a wide-open 2025 playoffs to seeing the team
commit even further to roster building and fielding a stronger contender in 2026.
The focus of these final three Cowboys games will shift towards longer-term roster evaluation as early as Saturday should the Eagles clinch the NFC East with a win against the Commanders. It is the Cowboys’ offense that seemingly has more blue chip players on locked in contracts to project a brighter future, but this doesn’t come without concerning questions being asked about the struggling Matt Eberflus defense at the moment. The entire weight of Schottenheimer’s emphasis on culture and competitiveness has been boiled down into the actions of one player on the offensive side of the ball, who will go into the offseason without a contract for the following season secured. After two straight down games against the Lions and Vikings, George Pickens has brought a lot of attention to himself for reasons that are unfortunately familiar given his past with the Steelers. On the other hand, Pickens proved capable of carrying the passing offense by himself in games without CeeDee Lamb earlier this season, something no other Dallas receiver has done in years.
Coming into their last home game of the season off back-to-back losses, one of the best things the Cowboys can see against the Chargers besides a win is both Lamb and Pickens consistently making big plays. If not, something that didn’t feel possible for much of the season will become a sad reality at the very start of the offseason, and that is the Cowboys still not having the right chemistry and makeup to their wide receiver room and talent at the skill positions in general to support an offense that can win in December and ultimately January/February.
For different reasons, some of the same things were said about the Chargers last season going into the playoffs, and were proven right when their pass offense was shut down by a stifling Houston Texans defense. They will be looking to inch closer to securing a second straight trip to the playoffs, as well as use this opportunity as a “get right” game for their receivers, against a Cowboys secondary that puts up little resistance.
The predictable argument the Cowboys would make against needing to shake up an offense they’ve already made big financial commitments to is that they are on track to finish as one of the league’s top scoring units once again. The Cowboys have fielded the league’s top-ranked offense in the past under Kellen Moore, who was then criticized by Mike McCarthy for not having balance before McCarthy also led the offense to the top rank, and now Schottenheimer is within range of doing the same thing – complete with getting the same empty results out of a ranking that means little without at least a trip to the playoffs.
Dallas’ offensive effort in their most recent 34-26 loss to the Vikings felt particular empty and hollow, and now their last chance to change this narrative against a quality defense comes in the early kickoff window of Week 16. At very least, the Cowboys offense has a new scheme this season under Schottenheimer which has been seen as one of the best lasting takeaways of this entire year even before it was known where this struggle of a season was going.
Perhaps the problem facing the Cowboys as to why they’re on the verge of wasting another stacked offense is new as well, increasing the likelihood of more outside-the-box solutions in the offseason. At this late stage of a season that mathematically cannot have a winning streak longer than three games now, it feels like the Cowboys defense has created an untenable situation for the offense one too many times in 2025 and created this team that lacks a winning identity down the stretch. There are real disconnects in all three phases of the game for the Cowboys right now, all with first-year coordinators that will be evaluated on the full season’s body of work – even if the team’s next three kickoffs come without any chance at the playoffs.
Hosting the Chargers on Sunday will be an important reminder for the Cowboys that finding themselves in this position yet again doesn’t have to be the norm. In Dak Prescott’s entire career as the Cowboys starter, he has just four wins where the team did not score at least 30 points. One of them came this season on the Sunday before Thanksgiving in the comeback to win 24-21 versus the Eagles. Two others were identical 20-17 wins against the Chargers in 2021 and 2023.
Both those 2021 and 2023 offenses finished as the league’s top-ranked unit, but winning by a field goal in low scoring affairs against the Chargers was a key point in both seasons as well. In the most recent win, the Cowboys were off a Sunday night embarrassment at the San Francisco 49ers, losing 42-10 in Santa Clara. Coming home to beat the Chargers off that loss stabilized them going into an early bye week at 4-2. Dallas improved to 5-2 after the bye by beating the other Los Angeles franchise 43-20 at home, and hosted a playoff game against the Packers that will be three seasons old in a few short weeks and is on the cusp of still being the franchise’s most recent playoff game of any kind.
Despite being sacked five times in that week six win, the Cowboys defense called by Dan Quinn stood tall enough to make Prescott the better quarterback in a game where both teams were very evenly matched in total first downs, third-down conversion rate, red zone success, and total number of plays. Prescott completed 70% of his passes, ran for a touchdown, and threw another to Brandin Cooks, while Justin Herbert completed just 59.5% of his attempts with one interception to Stephon Gilmore. With Prescott about to complete year two as the highest paid passer in the game, but his first full season healthy, the time is now for the Cowboys to be roster building in a way that gets back to maximizing the advantage they can have in games when Prescott is on the field compared to opposing quarterbacks against their defense. Seeing J.J. McCarthy set career highs in passing yards and yards per attempt while “griddying” into the end zone uncontested against them is far from achieving this goal, but there is precedent for the Cowboys coming off a SNF embarrassment to beat the Chargers specifically.
Matt Eberflus will be doing something that Dan Quinn did as defensive coordinator starting in this game against the Chargers on Sunday, and that is coaching upstairs from the box while defensive line coach Aaron Whitecotton takes on a bigger role as the coach on the sidelines to be hands on with the defense in-game. It will be interesting to see if this subtle change leads to Whitecotton elevating himself to the level of an Al Harris or Joe Whitt Jr., on-field coaches who were highly valued as assistants to Quinn. The Cowboys defense is set up to see the biggest benefit from Whitecotton’s expertise along the defensive line being maximized, as their front seven seemingly has way more potential answers moving forward than Dallas does in a secondary that continues to get depleted.
The other 20-17 Cowboys win over the Chargers in 2021 highlights even more things they’ll be actively working on in this upcoming matchup. The Cowboys leaned on their ground game to cap off two 75+ yard scoring drives in the first quarter with a pair of rushing touchdowns from Tony Pollard and then Ezekiel Elliott to start fast and lead 14-3. This has been part of the ideal Schottenheimer game plan that’s been completely lost in the current Cowboys approach on offense, and not for a lack of ability from mainly Javonte Williams in the backfield. Williams was banged up against the Vikings but still ran the ball effectively, but the Cowboys remain stuck between wanting patience and ball control on offense to rest their defense, or points in a hurry with the passing game to give a defense that is too porous to benefit from rest anyway the biggest possible cushion.
Herbert and the Chargers did get a touchdown and two-point conversion before halftime to cut the Cowboys lead to three and a field goal to tie it in the third quarter, but the teams trading three field goals in the fourth quarter was enough for the Cowboys to prevail as Greg Zuerlein’s 56-yard field goal came in the closing seconds of regulation. The Cowboys will be looking for a return to clutch kicking performances by Brandon Aubrey after missing two field goals cleanly in one game for the first time in his career. It was the third such game where Aubrey missed two kicks, with the other two coming outdoors on a notoriously bad Washington field, but even still one kick in each of these other instances was blocked.
The Cowboys have just this opportunity remaining to improve on a current 4-2-1 home record that looks better than it really is when considering losses to the Cardinals and Vikings, going to overtime against the Giants, as well as the circumstances of the tie with the Packers. The chance to do better than 1-4-1 in primetime in Coach Schotty’s first season has already come and gone, which will sting a team that isn’t backing down from doing everything they can to stay in these types of primetime spotlights. Playing in the early window is a strange rarity for this team, but the honest truth is it’s also the slot they deserve for this week and likely the remainder of the season.
The Cowboys had reasons to believe they were going to remain in the hunt for a NFC playoff spot as November turned to December, but the attrition of another long and emotional season has caught up to them before the finish line again, stripping them of these reasons to believe. Winning out is the Cowboys only chance to keep a 1% playoff hope alive, and even with that it could all end with one Eagles win before they even take the field next. Especially if Dallas is eliminated before playing the Chargers, the benefit of winning out is solely to be realized (if at all) at the start of 2026. While wins to secure season sweeps against the Commanders and Giants stand to be forgotten in this stretch, beating a Chargers team that just went into Arrowhead Stadium and knocked their rival Kansas City Chiefs out of the playoff picture could be a small but important souvenir from a season that’s hard to find truly memorable things to hold onto at this junction.
The Chargers won that game at the Chiefs in low-scoring fashion 16-13, proving capable of something the Cowboys have only proved mostly against the Chargers in recent history – but not this season. The last Cowboys win scoring 16 points or less was all the way back in 2018 as part of that four-game sample size under Prescott with a 13-10 home win versus the New Orleans Saints. A lot of things are going to need to go right for the Cowboys to win any type of low-scoring affair against the Chargers this time, with Justin Herbert throwing three touchdowns to no interceptions and completing 77.5% of his passes the only other time he played against an Eberflus defense.
No matter what happens, this game will be important tape for the coaching staff to use to evaluate effort, scheme, and technique, while the Cowboys look to extend their winning streak against the Chargers to three games, give their home fans one final thing to cheer about this season, and beat the Chargers in Arlington for the first time since week one of 1990 – another season that fell short of the playoffs.
