The Dallas Cowboys are licking their wounds after another bad loss at home to the Arizona Cardinals, and are starting the week of preparation for the Indianapolis Colts with a slew of injuries to monitor. The team’s state of play in the first half of the season has produced a losing record that’s going to be even harder to climb back from now.
Another theme coming out of the Cardinals loss is that perfectly healthy players, mainly George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb, didn’t see the field at critical moments.
Cowboys OLB Malachi Lawrence could miss multiple weeks with ankle injury – Tommy Yarrish, DallasCowboys.com
It’s been a quiet few weeks for the Cowboys second first-round pick, and now Malachi Lawrence may be shelved for a few weeks ahead.
On Tuesday, Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer announced that rookie OLB Malachi Lawrence suffered an ankle injury against the Cardinals and could miss multiple weeks.
“Malachi has [an injury] that might be a little bit longer…” Schottenheimer said.
“Looks like it could be a few weeks. So just keep doing some more testing, see how he moves around, but a little different than the other guys.”
Cowboys DBs Caleb Downs, P.J. Locke in concussion protocol – Charean Williams, Pro Football Talk
The Cowboys still can’t defend big plays, and now have two safeties in concussion protocol to start the week.
Coach Brian Schottenheimer said defensive back Caleb Downs and safety P.J. Locke are both in concussion protocol.
Downs, a first-round rookie, has played 509 defensive snaps — 92 percent — and 45 on special teams. He has totaled 52 tackles, a sack, a pass defensed and two forced fumbles.
Locke just returned from injured reserve, missing five games with a foot injury. He returned to practice Oct. 23.
The Dallas Cowboys are taking a stance that is very hard to understand ahead of the NFL’s trade deadline – Mauricio Rodriguez, A to Z Sports
The Cowboys are still open to adding players under Brian Schottenheimer, despite the stunning lack of consistency defining his tenure right now.
The Cowboys are 25 games into the Brian Schottenheimer era, and they have a losing record in that stretch. Part of the reason is they’ve strung together a winning streak only once in those 25 games, when they won three in a row last November.
Other than that, they haven’t been able to stack wins. Schottenheimer said it himself earlier this season: good teams stack wins.
He said that heading into the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game. Since then, the Cowboys have failed to do it, even with a favorable stretch.
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NFL Week 8 Sunday aftermath: Ravens’ season on the brink; can Vikings trust Kyler Murray? – Kevin Patra, NFL.com
It is still really hard to fathom how the Cowboys managed to give Sunday’s game away.
But let’s be real: This was an epic collapse, for which Dallas should be crushed.
On Sunday, a confluence of ineptitude caused Dallas to collapse at home to drop to 3-5 on the season. The defense became a sieve in the fourth quarter and couldn’t tackle. I understand that the Cowboys had some injuries, but letting Allgeier look like Jim Brown is not a product of a few missing players. The secondary inexplicably got burned late when all the Cowboys needed to do was keep everything in front of them. Frankly, Arizona could have scored quicker in the fourth quarter if not for a few misses. The defensive breakdowns continue to perplex Dallas this season.
5 reasons why the Cowboys lost to Cardinals – LP Cruz, Blogging The Boys
The Cardinals played two different QBs and RBs and racked up yards at will against the Cowboys, while the home team couldn’t execute their own offense.
For the second straight week, George Pickens was largely an afterthought.
Ten targets over the last two weeks simply isn’t enough for a player with his skill set. Pickens finished with two catches for 48 yards, including a 37-yard reception, and appeared to have a 59-yard touchdown wiped off the board by a holding penalty. Even after proving he could challenge Arizona vertically, Dallas never made a concerted effort to get him more involved.
George Pickens’ dwindling snap count among Cowboys’ numerous Week 8 questions – Todd Brock, The Cowboys Wire
The front seven has been a work in progress in the three games since Mike Pettine was added to the coaching staff.
Things are getting interesting at linebacker. Shemar James played almost every snap, marking his third straight week with over three-quarters of the defense’s reps. Rookie Jaishawn Barham has taken the biggest hit as a result of James’s ascension; his action on just 20% of the defensive snaps was easily his lowest as a Cowboy (and less than even Von Miller’s intentionally spotty workload). James Houston also got a bump in usage; his 20 snaps with the defense were his most of 2026.
