Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys lost in frankly embarrassing fashion last week to the last place team in the NFC North, 31-14 at the Chicago Bears. Their consolation prize for coming off their second loss of the season in which they also lost CeeDee Lamb and Tyler Booker to multiple week injuries? A home date with the first place Green Bay Packers, and Micah Parsons, on Sunday night – a team Dallas hasn’t beaten since 2016, and not at home since 2007.
In all three games this season, the Cowboys have looked like a team that’s needed to follow a very narrow path to victory to have a chance under Brian Schottenheimer. The path at least involves winning and losing with the Cowboys’ best and highest-earning players on the field, which is ideally how NFL teams need to operate from top down. Lamb’s absence against the Packers will be a big void in this way for the offense, but there are still things Dak Prescott and the rest of the offense can do to give themselves a better chance to upset the Packers compared to the Bears loss.
In our weekly Cowboys win or lose scenarios for last week in Chicago, we highlighted the Cowboys key to winning as attacking the middle of the field and staying on schedule offensively. The Cowboys did not do a good job in these areas without Lamb, as most of their completions over the middle were for short gains, and more notably they were taken out of the run game early. The Cowboys defense allowing big plays for touchdowns was the main reason for this, but as the game went on the Cowboys’ offense own turnovers did not help either. Prescott threw two interceptions following Javonte Williams’ fumble on the opening drive.
This leads us to how the Cowboys can start to establish a home field advantage on Sunday night, winning their second home game in as many tries on this young 2025 season.
There was a brief moment in time in week three where things actually felt good around the Cowboys. If that feeling could have been bottled up right then and there, a lot of Dallas fans would be looking to drink it in before kickoff to gain some hope against a Packers team that’s had their number. Coming off a thrilling win against the Giants, the Cowboys got the ball first against the Bears and had an explosive Williams run that would have put them in Bears territory, if not for a punch out at the end of the play that created the game’s first turnover. It feels likely the Cowboys defense was flat out bad enough in this game to find a way to lose it no matter how the script went, but the Cowboys at least had the right idea offensively to control tempo and look to force the...
