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Morning After Week 6 - Rico Gets His Big Day
Cowboys Thought They Were On Way Back To The Race, But Reality Bites in Carolina.
Bob Sturm
Oct 13, 2025
I think he made his point.
Meet Rico Dowdle. He spent the entirety of his professional career, all of the past five years, what we know as the Mike McCarthy era, as a member of the Dallas Cowboys. We knew him as an undrafted free agent with bad hips from South Carolina who the team always kept around because he had plenty to offer.
Those hips, along with other assorted lower body ailments, kept him from full health in college and early in his professional career and probably explains how he could go undrafted in the first place.
But, we now can take a point, because he made one with pretty emphatic force on Sunday. He was upset with the way that his time in Dallas ended — after establishing his career with a 1,000-yard season in 2024, he was very much an afterthought in free agency and allowed to walk away with no resistance. The Cowboys had other more important issues to attend to and Rico was pretty far down the list. After all, running backs are easy to replace and let’s not act like it is that big of a deal.
Well, the human involved felt otherwise. He waited his turn and paid his dues. Heck, he even was a good soldier while the Cowboys brass tried to run out any old and washed up RB they could find instead of him. Ezekiel Elliott and Dalvin Cook both wasted everyone’s time in 2024 and put up 3.1 and 2.5-yards-per-carry, respectively, as Rico sat up at 4.6 per and didn’t say a peep.
He was used to how things work around here so he waited his turn. There was even the time in San Francisco coming out of the bye week last year where Dowdle was made inactive due to what the team claimed was the flu. We were skeptical since he was signing autographs for fans on the side appearing ready to play the 49ers, but they preferred the Zeke and Dalvin show. They got it to the tune of 16 carries for 46 yards that night (2.87 per carry, which is pretty much what they did all year long).
But, he kept his head down and stayed ready. After that ridiculous decision from the team, he played 10 more games as the full-time RB and really took off. In those 10 games – which coincided with Dak Prescott’s season-ending injury – Dowdle took off and ran for 833 yards at 4.7 per carry. During that 10-game stretch in which the Cowboys had no QB and no offense, he was the 5th leading rusher in the entire NFL behind just Saquon Barkley, Jonathan Taylor, Derrick Henry, and Bijan Robinson.
Surely, he figured that this would mean they found their RB for 2025. After five years of working hard, keeping his head down, and grinding his butt off, he would probably be rewarded with some reasonable contract.
Instead, the Cowboys signed Javonte Williams on a 1-year, $3 million deal to resurrect his career and Rico settled with a 1-year, $2.75 million deal to be a backup in Carolina. We certainly do not know the inner conversations or what Rico thought the Cowboys should have offered him or how things got to a “let’s move on to someone else.” But, we will concede that he was pretty noisy last week about how he was anxious to play his old team and how they better “buckle up.”
Again, he is in the NFL and he is getting some nice money. But, he had to move and leave his friends to be someone’s backup when the team he loved moved on to someone else. Honestly, maybe they made the right move because Javonte Williams is a very nice player (although, I think the proper argument is that there is no reason that you don’t just sign both at that price). But, Rico didn’t get to 6-years in the NFL without being a competitor. We saw that yesterday as he vocally challenged the Cowboys defense in the week’s build up and then delivered unlike anyone ever has in the history of this sport.
Seldom does anyone call their shot quite like this. He set the Carolina Panthers record for scrimmage yards in a game (239), while also setting the NFL record for scrimmage yards in a game against a former team. But, wait, there is more.
What Rico Dowdle did yesterday also was the first time in five years that any player in the NFL has had back-to-back 225 yards scrimmage days and only the seventh guy in NFL history as he joined Walter Payton, Marshall Faulk, and that same Dalvin Cook character.
And yet, here is what is pretty wild about Rico Dowdle’s day. His longest run was 15 yards. Now, he did catch a 36-yard touchdown pass as the Cowboys did not seem interested in covering him, but other than that, all the damage was on the ground.
I counted 19 plays of 6 yards or more from just Rico Dowdle.
There they are: 19 plays for 196 yards for the young man. By comparison, Dallas had 19 running plays themselves. Their 19 plays totaled 31 yards. 1.6 yards per play. He came in at 10.3 yards per play.
Dowdle touched the ball 34 times for those 239 yards and at a certain point (early) it became incredibly clear that the Panthers saw that Dallas had no resistance. They probably hoped to stop him. They even likely wanted to stop him. They just had no idea how to stop him.
Think about it. This is Rico Dowdle. This league puts a premium on teams knowing what they have on their own roster and Dallas clearly didn’t. He is a guy you had less interest in retaining than you did your own punter and now he is messing with you like he is Walter Payton in his prime. He even vocally challenged you for a noon game in Charlotte that the league otherwise wouldn’t even care that much about and you could not do a thing to slow him down.
We have endured some very humiliating defensive efforts around here since Rico has been in the league, but this one has to be somewhere near the top of the list. At least Detroit and San Francisco and Baltimore all seemed like good football teams that did this. Now, Carolina – a team that might have picked first if you were to project it 10 days ago – is toying with you and holding the ball almost the entire fourth quarter because you can’t stop simple run plays right up the gut.
This man can retire today and have a memory that he will be asked about when he is 70. Do you remember that day you clowned your old boss Jerry Jones for the entire league to see?
“They wasn’t buckled up.”
Well, the game was not just about that, of course. But, it was mostly about that, for sure.
Dallas has an awful defense and we have known that. If I may quote our game preview from Friday, I believe none of this should have come as a major shock:
None of this is a surprise anymore.
But, then I ended the preview with this:
When George Pickens caught his 34-yard touchdown late in the 3rd Quarter, the Cowboys took a 24-20 lead. They had to know that one more touchdown wins the game because they must start every game knowing they must get to 30 to have a chance to win. In this game, it probably required 31. Of course, maybe Carolina can still come down and get a touchdown at the end instead of a field goal. Who can say? But, we do know this – this team can go as far as Dak Prescott and Brian Schottenheimer’s offense can take this team. And in the 4th Quarter on Sunday, they blinked.
No, it is not their fault. No, I am not watching this awful defense and blaming the QB. I am simply pointing out that this team has one way to win right now and under that recipe, I can’t have my final two drives resulting in a stalled drive inside the Panthers 10 yard line and then an terribly crucial 3-and-out on the final drive where they go backwards 8 yards. If ever there was a time to be clutch, it was there. Instead, they went backwards and punted.
They would never step on the field again until they were offering handshakes and hugs on their way to a defeat they could not afford.
It seems that this season is going to throw obstacle after obstacle at these two and the questions will continue on how well they can navigate them. But, man, this game is such a crucial failure to find a way to survive it. Carolina has plenty of their own issues, but they so beat up Dallas at the line of scrimmage in both directions that we probably should have known how the late stages of this fight would go. Once the bodies were tired, there was little hope Dallas could offer resistance anymore. They were beat up. They couldn’t run the ball and they couldn’t stop the run. They also offered almost no pass rush all day. There was no generation of negative plays at all. No tackles for loss or playing on the right side of the line of scrimmage. No ability to go get some tough yards and take heat of your passing game.
Instead, everyone looked at Dak and George Pickens to do everything and once they combined for 45 yards with 11:38 to go, that was that. From there on, Dallas had nine offensive snaps with the game on the line. Those nine plays totaled 3 yards. Not 3 yards per play, but 3 yards total.
Which means with the game on the line, the strong side of the ball was able to produce roughly 12 inches per snap.
They did tie the game at 27-27 with a field goal when they really needed a touchdown with 9:20 left. They surely assumed they would get a stop and then go win the game.
They actually got the stop. So, with 8:18 to play, Dallas would get the ball at the 46 and do absolutely nothing with it.
They punted it back with 6:07 left. And then the Cowboys defense did exactly what you would expect the 32nd best defense in a 32-team league would do. They collapsed.
So, as we sit here today in the aftermath, we must again establish this simple conclusion: For the Cowboys to go anywhere this year – or anytime soon since the front office has done a comically inept job at building a defense – it will need the Quarterback and the Play-caller to be masterful at all times. Most of the time won’t cut it, unfortunately.
And Sunday, they did not meet that standard late in the fourth quarter. They are better than that and they will tell you as much. They have to come up clutch when it matters most. And don’t expect anyone to tell you that about the Cowboys’ defense.
That conclusion is why this team is probably going to struggle for consistency every week in 2025.
Cowboys Thought They Were On Way Back To The Race, But Reality Bites in Carolina.
Bob Sturm
Oct 13, 2025
I think he made his point.
Meet Rico Dowdle. He spent the entirety of his professional career, all of the past five years, what we know as the Mike McCarthy era, as a member of the Dallas Cowboys. We knew him as an undrafted free agent with bad hips from South Carolina who the team always kept around because he had plenty to offer.
Those hips, along with other assorted lower body ailments, kept him from full health in college and early in his professional career and probably explains how he could go undrafted in the first place.
But, we now can take a point, because he made one with pretty emphatic force on Sunday. He was upset with the way that his time in Dallas ended — after establishing his career with a 1,000-yard season in 2024, he was very much an afterthought in free agency and allowed to walk away with no resistance. The Cowboys had other more important issues to attend to and Rico was pretty far down the list. After all, running backs are easy to replace and let’s not act like it is that big of a deal.
Well, the human involved felt otherwise. He waited his turn and paid his dues. Heck, he even was a good soldier while the Cowboys brass tried to run out any old and washed up RB they could find instead of him. Ezekiel Elliott and Dalvin Cook both wasted everyone’s time in 2024 and put up 3.1 and 2.5-yards-per-carry, respectively, as Rico sat up at 4.6 per and didn’t say a peep.
He was used to how things work around here so he waited his turn. There was even the time in San Francisco coming out of the bye week last year where Dowdle was made inactive due to what the team claimed was the flu. We were skeptical since he was signing autographs for fans on the side appearing ready to play the 49ers, but they preferred the Zeke and Dalvin show. They got it to the tune of 16 carries for 46 yards that night (2.87 per carry, which is pretty much what they did all year long).
But, he kept his head down and stayed ready. After that ridiculous decision from the team, he played 10 more games as the full-time RB and really took off. In those 10 games – which coincided with Dak Prescott’s season-ending injury – Dowdle took off and ran for 833 yards at 4.7 per carry. During that 10-game stretch in which the Cowboys had no QB and no offense, he was the 5th leading rusher in the entire NFL behind just Saquon Barkley, Jonathan Taylor, Derrick Henry, and Bijan Robinson.
Surely, he figured that this would mean they found their RB for 2025. After five years of working hard, keeping his head down, and grinding his butt off, he would probably be rewarded with some reasonable contract.
Instead, the Cowboys signed Javonte Williams on a 1-year, $3 million deal to resurrect his career and Rico settled with a 1-year, $2.75 million deal to be a backup in Carolina. We certainly do not know the inner conversations or what Rico thought the Cowboys should have offered him or how things got to a “let’s move on to someone else.” But, we will concede that he was pretty noisy last week about how he was anxious to play his old team and how they better “buckle up.”
Again, he is in the NFL and he is getting some nice money. But, he had to move and leave his friends to be someone’s backup when the team he loved moved on to someone else. Honestly, maybe they made the right move because Javonte Williams is a very nice player (although, I think the proper argument is that there is no reason that you don’t just sign both at that price). But, Rico didn’t get to 6-years in the NFL without being a competitor. We saw that yesterday as he vocally challenged the Cowboys defense in the week’s build up and then delivered unlike anyone ever has in the history of this sport.
Seldom does anyone call their shot quite like this. He set the Carolina Panthers record for scrimmage yards in a game (239), while also setting the NFL record for scrimmage yards in a game against a former team. But, wait, there is more.
What Rico Dowdle did yesterday also was the first time in five years that any player in the NFL has had back-to-back 225 yards scrimmage days and only the seventh guy in NFL history as he joined Walter Payton, Marshall Faulk, and that same Dalvin Cook character.
And yet, here is what is pretty wild about Rico Dowdle’s day. His longest run was 15 yards. Now, he did catch a 36-yard touchdown pass as the Cowboys did not seem interested in covering him, but other than that, all the damage was on the ground.
I counted 19 plays of 6 yards or more from just Rico Dowdle.
There they are: 19 plays for 196 yards for the young man. By comparison, Dallas had 19 running plays themselves. Their 19 plays totaled 31 yards. 1.6 yards per play. He came in at 10.3 yards per play.
Dowdle touched the ball 34 times for those 239 yards and at a certain point (early) it became incredibly clear that the Panthers saw that Dallas had no resistance. They probably hoped to stop him. They even likely wanted to stop him. They just had no idea how to stop him.
Think about it. This is Rico Dowdle. This league puts a premium on teams knowing what they have on their own roster and Dallas clearly didn’t. He is a guy you had less interest in retaining than you did your own punter and now he is messing with you like he is Walter Payton in his prime. He even vocally challenged you for a noon game in Charlotte that the league otherwise wouldn’t even care that much about and you could not do a thing to slow him down.
We have endured some very humiliating defensive efforts around here since Rico has been in the league, but this one has to be somewhere near the top of the list. At least Detroit and San Francisco and Baltimore all seemed like good football teams that did this. Now, Carolina – a team that might have picked first if you were to project it 10 days ago – is toying with you and holding the ball almost the entire fourth quarter because you can’t stop simple run plays right up the gut.
This man can retire today and have a memory that he will be asked about when he is 70. Do you remember that day you clowned your old boss Jerry Jones for the entire league to see?
“They wasn’t buckled up.”
Well, the game was not just about that, of course. But, it was mostly about that, for sure.
Dallas has an awful defense and we have known that. If I may quote our game preview from Friday, I believe none of this should have come as a major shock:
We knew they were unlikely to slow down the Panthers. They are a bad defense and while coaching is suspect right now, the personnel is the major issue. The front office has built a comically bad defense with no real alternatives in tow. In short, they are what they are until they can materially make over a defense that has weaknesses and poor fits at more than half of the spots on their defense. Even worse, they appear to not have backups who are forcing their way into the mix.
None of this is a surprise anymore.
But, then I ended the preview with this:
And, honestly, this is where the game comes down. In the 4th Quarter of this contest, the Cowboys had two drives and scored 3 points, while the Panthers had three drives in which two of them exceeded 5 minutes each and put up 10 points.
When George Pickens caught his 34-yard touchdown late in the 3rd Quarter, the Cowboys took a 24-20 lead. They had to know that one more touchdown wins the game because they must start every game knowing they must get to 30 to have a chance to win. In this game, it probably required 31. Of course, maybe Carolina can still come down and get a touchdown at the end instead of a field goal. Who can say? But, we do know this – this team can go as far as Dak Prescott and Brian Schottenheimer’s offense can take this team. And in the 4th Quarter on Sunday, they blinked.
No, it is not their fault. No, I am not watching this awful defense and blaming the QB. I am simply pointing out that this team has one way to win right now and under that recipe, I can’t have my final two drives resulting in a stalled drive inside the Panthers 10 yard line and then an terribly crucial 3-and-out on the final drive where they go backwards 8 yards. If ever there was a time to be clutch, it was there. Instead, they went backwards and punted.
They would never step on the field again until they were offering handshakes and hugs on their way to a defeat they could not afford.
It seems that this season is going to throw obstacle after obstacle at these two and the questions will continue on how well they can navigate them. But, man, this game is such a crucial failure to find a way to survive it. Carolina has plenty of their own issues, but they so beat up Dallas at the line of scrimmage in both directions that we probably should have known how the late stages of this fight would go. Once the bodies were tired, there was little hope Dallas could offer resistance anymore. They were beat up. They couldn’t run the ball and they couldn’t stop the run. They also offered almost no pass rush all day. There was no generation of negative plays at all. No tackles for loss or playing on the right side of the line of scrimmage. No ability to go get some tough yards and take heat of your passing game.
Instead, everyone looked at Dak and George Pickens to do everything and once they combined for 45 yards with 11:38 to go, that was that. From there on, Dallas had nine offensive snaps with the game on the line. Those nine plays totaled 3 yards. Not 3 yards per play, but 3 yards total.
Which means with the game on the line, the strong side of the ball was able to produce roughly 12 inches per snap.
They did tie the game at 27-27 with a field goal when they really needed a touchdown with 9:20 left. They surely assumed they would get a stop and then go win the game.
They actually got the stop. So, with 8:18 to play, Dallas would get the ball at the 46 and do absolutely nothing with it.
They punted it back with 6:07 left. And then the Cowboys defense did exactly what you would expect the 32nd best defense in a 32-team league would do. They collapsed.
So, as we sit here today in the aftermath, we must again establish this simple conclusion: For the Cowboys to go anywhere this year – or anytime soon since the front office has done a comically inept job at building a defense – it will need the Quarterback and the Play-caller to be masterful at all times. Most of the time won’t cut it, unfortunately.
And Sunday, they did not meet that standard late in the fourth quarter. They are better than that and they will tell you as much. They have to come up clutch when it matters most. And don’t expect anyone to tell you that about the Cowboys’ defense.
That conclusion is why this team is probably going to struggle for consistency every week in 2025.
