For the first time since 2024, it is time for the Governor’s Cup to be played in week four between the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans, a NFC vs. AFC battle of Lone Star State pro football teams. This will be the first early kickoff game of the season for the Cowboys, and with it coming on October 4th, this will also be the earliest date on the calendar these two teams have met since their first-ever meeting on September 8th, 2002.
Yes, this was the first game in Texans franchise history, and they
started with a bang beating the Cowboys at home 19-10.
Despite the latest installment of this game coming so early, both Brian Schottenheimer and DeMeco Ryans, and their teams, will feel like they’ve faced more than their share of attrition and adversity in the early going of this 2026 season. The Cowboys are 1-2 through three games for the third year in a row, with a record of 1-0-1 in their last two week four contests in this spot. Amazingly, this is the second year in a row the Texans are 0-3. They stopped their slide last season also in week four with a home win, 26-0 against the Tennessee Titans.
This will be the first meeting between these two teams where they both enter with a losing record. It will also be the latest in a season the Cowboys are playing an opponent still searching for their first win since also doing so in week four of 2019 at home against the Miami Dolphins. Having the focus and attention to detail to hand these desperate teams another loss is something the Cowboys have struggled with more recently.
Last season’s Bears game comes to mind for the Cowboys in this spot. The Ben Johnson era in Chicago began with two divisional losses to the Vikings and Lions, but they became the Caleb Williams-Ben Johnson Bears against last year’s woeful Cowboys defense, the start of four straight wins for the Bears.
The Cowboys will be hoping they already put this type of game behind them from a defensive standpoint, especially in the ‘big plays allowed’ department, in Brazil against the Ravens. They come out of the international game with two safeties, P.J. Locke and Jalen Thompson, injured and set to miss extended time, but draw C.J. Stroud and a Texans offense that’s struggled mightily to push the ball downfield.
Stroud is on pace for his lowest completion percentage since coming into the league in 2023, has not thrown an interception yet but been sacked ten times with one of them being a strip sack, and been the signal caller for an offense that’s collectively gone 16 for 44 on third down in three losses.
These 44 third downs faced are tied for the second most in the league so far. Houston also went 0-4 in the red zone and scored only six points at home in week two against the Bengals, a very disappointing response after taking the Buffalo Bills to the wire in week one.
The Texans’ biggest offseason addition to be more dynamic offensively was not at receiver or tight end, but running back David Montgomery. The right formula has not been there to get Montgomery going, as he’s faced the highest percentage of eight man boxes in the league by nearly 2.5% more than the second place back Ashton Jeanty.
The reason the sky is not falling in Houston for a winless team as much as it is further north in Texas for the 1-2 Cowboys is because not only were the Texans in this spot last year, but they became the seventh team since 1981 to make the playoffs after an 0-3 start. Even more amazingly, the Texans were also the most recent team to do this prior to 2025, in 2018 with an 11-5 finish.
This is the same record the 1992 San Diego Chargers finished with, despite starting 0-4, and still to this day they are the only example of a team starting 0-4 and making the playoffs. DeMeco Ryans, the head coach that’s taken H-Town to the Divisional Round of the playoffs the last three years, will get to dig in and prepare as the fourth straight defensive-minded head coach to play the Cowboys this year. Ryans will likely find a lot to like about how John Harbaugh and the Giants, and Jesse Minter and the Ravens, took the game to the Cowboys offense in big spots.
Throw in the pressure and expectations around Dallas being exponentially higher than they are in Houston, despite pressure on this being a crucial year for Stroud and Ryans to take another step, and it will be the visiting head coach under the most pressure compared to the winless one in Sunday’s game.
In a very weird way despite the Cowboys-Texans rivalry only going back to 2002, and the Cowboys only having 10 head coaches in their franchise history going back to 1960, the Texans have been a common opponent in seasons that turned out to be very significant for Dallas head coaches many times before.
The 2002 Cowboys that began the year with a loss to the Texans moved on from HC Dave Campo after finishing 5-11, hiring Bill Parcells for 2003. Parcells wouldn’t coach against the Texans until 2006, beating them at home in week six that season, but again this was a head coach’s final year in Big D. Parcells was replaced by Wade Phillips in 2007. In 2010, Phillips would get his first win of the season in week three against the Texans in Houston. Losing his next five games though, Phillips was fired mid-season and replaced by Jason Garrett.
Garrett became the first Cowboys head coach to last for multiple matchups against the Texans when he beat them in overtime in 2014 at home, and lost in overtime on the road in 2018. Mike McCarthy would follow this by beating the Texans in 2022, but losing by the biggest margin the Cowboys have ever lost to the Texans by in his final season of 2024.
That was a Monday Night Football primetime game in Week 11 of this season, and Cooper Rush versus Stroud at quarterback. KaVontae Turpin provided the lone Cowboys touchdown from 64 yards out in the second quarter, cutting a 14-0 Texans lead in half, but Houston would pull away 34-10 to win it.
The current Cowboys aren’t built to be thinking about 2029 in any way, shape, or form, the next time they’ll see the Texans. All they need to focus on is seeing Schottenheimer right the ship and get to 2-2 in his first opportunity against the Texans. Doing so would turn the narrative, even just a little bit, on this run of Schotty calling plays against defensive head coaches, a run that will continue in week five against Todd Bowles and the Buccaneers.
The Cowboys and Texans have alternated wins and losses in this series starting with that 2014 meeting, and with the Texans winning the most recent one in Dallas, this pattern continuing would see the Cowboys get their first win in Houston since 2010. History says the Texans are absolutely playing for their postseason lives, and the Cowboys are looking for their first win against a team not in their own division since last Thanksgiving.
Tensions are high on both sides and something has to give, with the Cowboys returning from Brazil and Texans coming home from Indianapolis off their first loss to the Colts since 2023, and first at Indy since 2021. The Colts had a balanced approach on offense with Daniel Jones throwing it 36 times, Jonathan Taylor running it 23 teams as part of 31 rushes total, while Josh Downs and Tyler Warren led the Colts in targets. Old-timers Keenan Allen and Laquon Treadwell made big plays as well, including on the final drive that ended in a go-ahead 53-yard field goal for the Colts.
This would be as good of a time as ever for the Cowboys to look at how the Colts, Bengals, and Bills played the Texans and play their own brand of complementary football to calm everything down, even just a little bit.
