Blogging The Boys
The 3-5-1 Dallas Cowboys won’t be back on the field until November 17th, yet another Monday Night Football game at the Las Vegas Raiders, but after this Monday’s loss at home to the Arizona Cardinals, the sense of positive anticipation for this game, or any of the much tougher ones that follow it, is woefully low. By dropping back-to-back games with hardly much competitiveness in either loss at the Broncos or versus the Cardinals, there’s no doubt the entire tenor of this 2025 Cowboys season has shifted quite dramatically over the last two weeks.
The organization was active on Tuesday’s trade deadline to try and change this down outlook on the remainder of this year, addressing the defense that’s struggled in every single loss – and even some of the wins – this season. The Cowboys loss to the Cardinals also revealed work to be done on offense too. It put a team under a first-year head coach in Brian Schottenheimer who’s prioritized culture in a spotlight where their best players made unforced errors and the overall accountability in a lackluster 27-17 loss felt subpar. The Cowboys looked lost, and the Cardinals looked better than they had all season, snapping a five-game losing streak in emphatic fashion. This tough scene all around for a Cowboys team well behind the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC East has caused a more long-term view in the reactions to the Cowboys defense adding LB Logan Wilson and DT Quinnen Williams.
When it comes to the latter, a move that consisted of trading Mazi Smith, a 2026 second-round pick, and one of their two 2017 first-round picks to the Jets for Williams, the Cowboys finally landed a player they’ve had interest in for a long time to shake up the defensive tackle depth chart yet again. A position group where Dallas would notoriously scrape the bottom of the barrel in free agency and maybe spend a day three pick on, also swinging and missing on multiple ill-advised first-round picks over the years, will now feature this offseason’s FA addition Solomon Thomas, Kenny Clark who came over in the Micah Parsons trade, the homegrown Osa Odighizuwa, Williams, and rookie Jay Toia. It is as drastic of a change in philosophy and talent acquisition towards one position group that the Cowboys have been through in many years, which on the surface is a good thing in and of itself. However, it also shows the Cowboys are still throwing darts at establishing an identity they’ve talked about wanting for some time now, and even with Williams in the fold have work to do elsewhere.
Whether or not the Cowboys took a big enough step away from the tendencies under Mike McCarthy by hiring the offensive coordinator that worked under him in Schottenheimer, and if doing so would even be a good thing or not, is one of the things this 2025 season that’s been unable to get off the ground is answering. McCarthy talked ad nauseum about wanting...
