ARLINGTON, Texas — Concerning, humbling, stunning, shocking. Any of those words are fitting for the Dallas Cowboys’ play Sunday afternoon at AT&T Stadium.
Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones used some variation of each as he answered questions outside of the team’s locker room following a 47-9 loss to the Detroit Lions. It’s the worst loss in Jones’ 35 years as owner of the team.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones just called today’s 47-9 loss to the Lions “very concerning” and “very humbling.”
“This was a shocker.” pic.twitter.com/1A9nF6BCbt
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) October 13, 2024
Quarterback Dak Prescott agreed with most of them.
“Humbling,” he said, “humbling for sure. Concerning? I’m not a guy to hit the panic button. I get to have the ball in my hands. I get to lead this offense. I get to lead this team. Hard for me to say that. And then shocking? I can agree to that to some extent just on the way that they came out and played harder than us in every phase. Obviously, you never prepare for that or think that can happen the way that it did today here at home again. Now dropping three at home, a place that we’ve been great at.”
There are so many reasons why the Cowboys were handed their fourth consecutive home loss, dating to last season’s wild-card loss to the Green Bay Packers. The biggest in all four games has been their awful starts.
They trailed the Lions 27-6 at halftime Sunday. It looked just like the three previous home losses: down 27-7 at halftime against the Packers, down 35-16 at halftime to the New Orleans Saints and down 21-6 to the Baltimore Ravens.
The Cowboys turned the ball over five times and didn’t record one takeaway against the Lions.
They never got anything substantial going in the passing game, and the running game looked as poor as it did in their other recent home games, managing only 53 yards on 17 carries.
There was also poor tackling and far too many Detroit pass catchers running wide open.
All these things should contribute to losing football games. The much more alarming part is it’s contributing to games that aren’t even close. Sure, the Cowboys didn’t have Micah Parsons, DeMarcus Lawrence, DaRon Bland, Brandin Cooks and Marshawn Kneeland. If they had lost 28-17, those absences could easily be credited for the outcome. But they were embarrassed by a team that looks like it is in a completely different league.
“We’re up and down right now,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said. “If you want to put it on a grid, use mathematics, the analytics. I mean, the ebb and flow of what we’re doing is there’s way too many highs and too many lows. This is all over right now. There’s none of us that feel good about how we performed today. That’s where it’s important for every one of us, starting with myself, they need to look in the mirror. They need to stick together. They aren’t going to get any help. We don’t need any help, don’t want any help. So, we just need to stay after it, keep working, and I’m very confident we’ll come out the other end.”
Jones, who turned 82 on Sunday, said the team has more question marks than he would have thought at this time in the season. He said he was not ready to talk about personnel or coaching changes. When specifically asked about a head coaching change, Jones responded: “I’m not considering that.”
Not how Jerry Jones wanted to celebrate his birthday pic.twitter.com/sa3CgvoPSA
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) October 13, 2024
He called it “very” disappointing that this poor play keeps happening at home. Before the loss to the Packers in January, the Cowboys had the NFL’s longest home winning streak at 16 games.
“We all know you should feel better at home,” Jones said. “I think that is an advantage. You don’t travel, sleep in your own bed. It should be an advantage at home. That’s one of the first things you look at. How come we’re not playing better when we have the advantage against the other team? We get to wake up in the morning and we’re in familiar territory. All of that is stuff to think about.”
This was supposed to be a Cowboys season where the team built on what it has accomplished the three previous seasons. Those three all ended with 12-win regular seasons that came up short in the playoffs. The hope has been that this will finally be the team that gets over the hump in January. But Dallas is playing like a team that won’t even be eligible for the playoffs.
The Lions, Minnesota Vikings and the San Francisco 49ers, the Cowboys’ opponent after the bye week, are the class of the NFC right now. Judging by what was on display Sunday at AT&T Stadium, the gap between the Lions and Cowboys is significant.
Surprisingly, Jones said he thinks the Cowboys are capable of closing that gap this season.
“The how part of it is something the whole NFL would like to know,” he said. “Not how we do it, but how everybody does it. There will be only one champion this year and everybody will wonder how they did it. There’s nobody that has a blueprint of how we’re going to do it this way before the season starts. That’s not realistic.”
The Cowboys head into the bye at 3-3. The last time they started a season 0-3 at home was 2010. They finished that year 6-10.
“There’s nothing magic about the bye week,” Jones said. “This was very concerning and very humbling. … We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
(Photo of Sam LaPorta and DeMarvion Overshown: Kevin Jairaj / Imagn Images)
