dpf1123
DCC 4Life
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2013
- Messages
- 2,926
The Morning After - We Cannot Trust The Cowboys
In the first year of the new regime, we have learned that this group cannot handle prosperity.
Bob Sturm
Dec 15, 2025
Can’t trust them.
You really can’t.
We knew this, so it wasn’t a major news flash, but it does show us again why projecting anything is probably a waste of time. When you project something like playoff possibilities, it does come down to the assumptions that “you should win this game against this opponent in this situation” and those assumptions obviously always mislead us.
There are teams that probably do win the games they were supposed to win. Heck, the last Cowboys coach for five years won a great majority of the games his team was supposed to win (they were 34-9 –.791 win percentage, second only to Kansas City over that five-year period of time – when favored by 3 points or more) and that was turned into a great negative because why doesn’t he win more games he is not supposed to win? Why just beat the bad teams? We want you to beat more good teams, too?
Well, the new administration has turned it all on its ear, so far. The Brian Schottenheimer Cowboys are back under .500 by losing a game that most thought was surely a win. The Vikings are out of the race and hopeless and a long ways back with a QB who has low confidence levels, so they won’t have much resistance when they come to town. Dallas is still in the race (sort of) and will respond after being smacked around by Detroit by hammering a team in their path because they must. This should be a win if Dallas doesn’t do anything too dumb to hurt themselves. They had zero turnovers and still lost with ease.
Don’t bother projecting this 2025 Cowboys team for anything that they haven’t earned because in games in which they are favored by 3 points or more this season, they are now just 2-3. Only Atlanta loses more games as a favorite than the Cowboys do in 2025 and we definitely know you don’t want to share honors with the Falcons when it comes to achievement. Imagine if you had a winning record in games that you were judged to have an advantage. The playoffs might be reasonably booked.
But, that is the flip side of a high-variance football team. In a span of five days, they could win great battles against both Super Bowl teams from February. But, then in consecutive games to back it up, they could give up 78 points to two teams from the NFC North who also appear likely to miss the playoffs. Add that to the 71 points scored by the other half of the NFC North and that is four games to that bunch where 149 points were scored and zero wins were gathered (0-3-1, 37.3 points per game allowed).
How did this one go so badly?
Simple inefficiency, again.
The entire operation is built around having weapons that use each other to put defenses in a bind. Every choice by the defense should lead to a solution by the Cowboys offense and those results should take pressure off the defense to have to play perfectly to play winning football.
Yet, the offense again let the Cowboys down in this spot and it starting to feel a bit like a trend. They scored touchdowns on two of their first three possessions and set a very fine tone, but that second touchdown – which was scored 8 seconds into the second quarter – would be the last time they would reach the end zone. They would have seven more drives and each one would move easily into Minnesota territory and they would only gather 12 more points all night.
Seven drives into Vikings territory for 12 points on a night where you didn’t have a single turnover? How could you be that inefficient in one game?
I’d submit after reviewing each of those drives that Dallas was pretty sure they could kick enough field goals to win. In other words, the Minnesota blitz was giving them fits, the solutions were fleeting, so let’s just load up on Brandon Aubrey for 3 points at a time and nurse this thing home.
The trouble with this conservative thinking is it relies on a lot of things going right. For instance, Aubrey better be as automatic as you think he is. And let me say, expecting him to remain automatic from 59-yards is your own fault. I have seen Steph Curry make enough shots from half-court to not be shocked when he makes them, but I also have seen enough basketball to know that half-court should never be taken for granted. I suspect Dallas has allowed themselves to believe Aubrey is not human. He is.
Then, the other issue with last night’s logic was the idea that you could depend on J.J. McCarthy missing throws enough to tie his own noose. He was far from perfect – especially with an interception on his first throw of the night – but, he made some very nice throws with confidence and then his coach, Kevin O’Connell, seemed willing to roll the dice with far more conviction and effectiveness than Schottenheimer did. O’Connell understood that his team had nothing to lose, so when they hit a key explosive pass on 4th and 3 late in the third quarter, they flipped the game on its ear. Dallas was playing in a way that required a Vikings self-destruction and Minnesota shrugged and did more than enough on both sides of the ball to spoil what was left of the Cowboys season.
The 2-of-12 (17%) on 3rd downs for Dallas and 2-of55 (40%) in the red zone will be the statistics that best demonstrate how Dallas managed to lose this game despite nice raw numbers like 423 yards. Those raw yardage stats may help in the world of fantasy football, but like the Detroit game, there is a time and place where you have to take the fight to your opponent in a way that shows you have solutions built in precision and for whatever reason here down the stretch, the Cowboys seem to have lost their way.
There is no doubt Minnesota and Detroit have put game plans together to hit Dak Prescott repeatedly and to put the Cowboys offense into hurried discomfort. They do not look relaxed and composed now on these high-stress downs and while they were able to deal with the Eagles and Chiefs defenses with a little more success, we do continue to see that the pressure on the QB is becoming more and more of an issue.
In this game, Minnesota had to turn the heat up and up and just look at the stark differences from when he had time to throw versus the Brian Flores pressure packages:
Dak was pressured 27 times in this game and sacked twice. McCarthy was pressured just 10 times and not sacked at all. This is more of what we have seen from Thursday Night in Detroit and you can definitely see that the solutions are not coming as easy for the offense anymore. The attention CeeDee Lamb is getting is substantial and for whatever reason, the George Pickens show has not been close to what it was and now we wonder why that is being so well taken away. Things are moving fast for this offense and it all seems to lead us back to protection is becoming more and more of a problem.
That might be OK if the defense could generate any significant moments themselves, but they managed to allow the Vikings hapless offense to get into their end zone four times in four quarters and aside from that takeaway in the first quarter, there were no more turnovers or sacks all night long. Yes, Minnesota has guys all over the field who are scary players, but they had not scored this many points since September and they probably haven’t looked this comfortable in their offense with this young QB at any point yet.
But, that is what happens when teams play the Matt Eberflus defense. It just continues to get smacked around to the tune of 17 points in the 1st half and 17 points in the second half, too. There is no pass pressure, little coverage down the field, and they just can’t seem to get stops. They just can’t get stops in the red zone and give up the maximum amount of points every time.
The Eagles went 3 for 3 in the red zone with 21 points on three trips.
The Chiefs went 3 for 3.
The Lions went 4 for 5.
The Vikings went 3 for 4.
So, with this new defense where the personnel is different, Dallas has managed to allow 15 trips into the red zone and 13 touchdowns. 87% is an incredible recipe to get you defeated and when we talk about efficiency, we should start there. Dallas has generally been more productive than their opponents but it doesn’t matter. The offense does not cash in and settles for field goals and the opponents – usually with less production – gets the maximum amount of points on a regular basis.
I suppose that is where we find ourselves again. A tease of a team that seems to do a lot right at times, but unable to get the results because they are too inefficient. They are able to step up in a game against an opponent that seems better than them, but then are taken apart because they are just not consistently good enough to do things on a weekly basis.
In short, once again, we are back at this part of the story where they are good enough to tease and then bad enough to disappoint. They are different than last year’s team, but not better by any real stretch. They have lots of issues and are far from where it seems they should be. I suppose, in many ways, the Thanksgiving mirage should be treated as such and the larger sample tells us what we suspected all along:
The offense is not near precise enough to cover for a defense that lags behind. There is not enough consistent winning up front in either direction to suggest this is a true contender. But, there is also a stark reality that we continue to revisit all season:
For all of the good that head coach and quarterback have provided in 2025, they also have left too much meat on the bone to suggest that either are free from blame on any level.
The head coach has not dialed this offense nearly enough. He was getting almost 5 yards a carry on the ground in this game, but never pushed the Vikings around with his ground game enough to back off all of the blitzing. It felt like Javonte Williams has nobody behind him that they feel good about and therefore cannot pound the ball for any long period of time.
Then, the QB has to sort things and we are quick to sing his praises when he does. But, on this night, he looked like a fatigued QB who had a bad overall performance and was perhaps taking the best of the bad choices and throwing short of the sticks way too much. This leads to drive killing sequences where you play right into Minnesota’s expert hands.
In short, if this season truly is one where they go as far as coach and quarterback can take them, well, perhaps we got the answer again last night, loud and clear. With a coach who is willing to settle for field goals and a QB who can not make Minnesota pay, Dallas lost a game they couldn’t lose. The defense could not trouble a QB without confidence and an offense could not do better than 17% on 3rd down. Dak was pressured as much as he has been pressured in years and everyone looks upset again because the favored Cowboys let a team come in here and win a game that put a sword right in this season’s heart.
Change is something we are familiar with around here and all we know now is that changes are going to need to be made yet again. This defense is still miles away and now we know the offense isn’t special enough to cover those problems up. Dallas will not go to these playoffs and the rest of the schedule will be to simply play out the string.
They simply are just not good enough. Again.
In the first year of the new regime, we have learned that this group cannot handle prosperity.
Bob Sturm
Dec 15, 2025
Can’t trust them.
You really can’t.
We knew this, so it wasn’t a major news flash, but it does show us again why projecting anything is probably a waste of time. When you project something like playoff possibilities, it does come down to the assumptions that “you should win this game against this opponent in this situation” and those assumptions obviously always mislead us.
There are teams that probably do win the games they were supposed to win. Heck, the last Cowboys coach for five years won a great majority of the games his team was supposed to win (they were 34-9 –.791 win percentage, second only to Kansas City over that five-year period of time – when favored by 3 points or more) and that was turned into a great negative because why doesn’t he win more games he is not supposed to win? Why just beat the bad teams? We want you to beat more good teams, too?
Well, the new administration has turned it all on its ear, so far. The Brian Schottenheimer Cowboys are back under .500 by losing a game that most thought was surely a win. The Vikings are out of the race and hopeless and a long ways back with a QB who has low confidence levels, so they won’t have much resistance when they come to town. Dallas is still in the race (sort of) and will respond after being smacked around by Detroit by hammering a team in their path because they must. This should be a win if Dallas doesn’t do anything too dumb to hurt themselves. They had zero turnovers and still lost with ease.
Don’t bother projecting this 2025 Cowboys team for anything that they haven’t earned because in games in which they are favored by 3 points or more this season, they are now just 2-3. Only Atlanta loses more games as a favorite than the Cowboys do in 2025 and we definitely know you don’t want to share honors with the Falcons when it comes to achievement. Imagine if you had a winning record in games that you were judged to have an advantage. The playoffs might be reasonably booked.
But, that is the flip side of a high-variance football team. In a span of five days, they could win great battles against both Super Bowl teams from February. But, then in consecutive games to back it up, they could give up 78 points to two teams from the NFC North who also appear likely to miss the playoffs. Add that to the 71 points scored by the other half of the NFC North and that is four games to that bunch where 149 points were scored and zero wins were gathered (0-3-1, 37.3 points per game allowed).
How did this one go so badly?
Simple inefficiency, again.
The entire operation is built around having weapons that use each other to put defenses in a bind. Every choice by the defense should lead to a solution by the Cowboys offense and those results should take pressure off the defense to have to play perfectly to play winning football.
Yet, the offense again let the Cowboys down in this spot and it starting to feel a bit like a trend. They scored touchdowns on two of their first three possessions and set a very fine tone, but that second touchdown – which was scored 8 seconds into the second quarter – would be the last time they would reach the end zone. They would have seven more drives and each one would move easily into Minnesota territory and they would only gather 12 more points all night.
Seven drives into Vikings territory for 12 points on a night where you didn’t have a single turnover? How could you be that inefficient in one game?
I’d submit after reviewing each of those drives that Dallas was pretty sure they could kick enough field goals to win. In other words, the Minnesota blitz was giving them fits, the solutions were fleeting, so let’s just load up on Brandon Aubrey for 3 points at a time and nurse this thing home.
The trouble with this conservative thinking is it relies on a lot of things going right. For instance, Aubrey better be as automatic as you think he is. And let me say, expecting him to remain automatic from 59-yards is your own fault. I have seen Steph Curry make enough shots from half-court to not be shocked when he makes them, but I also have seen enough basketball to know that half-court should never be taken for granted. I suspect Dallas has allowed themselves to believe Aubrey is not human. He is.
Then, the other issue with last night’s logic was the idea that you could depend on J.J. McCarthy missing throws enough to tie his own noose. He was far from perfect – especially with an interception on his first throw of the night – but, he made some very nice throws with confidence and then his coach, Kevin O’Connell, seemed willing to roll the dice with far more conviction and effectiveness than Schottenheimer did. O’Connell understood that his team had nothing to lose, so when they hit a key explosive pass on 4th and 3 late in the third quarter, they flipped the game on its ear. Dallas was playing in a way that required a Vikings self-destruction and Minnesota shrugged and did more than enough on both sides of the ball to spoil what was left of the Cowboys season.
The 2-of-12 (17%) on 3rd downs for Dallas and 2-of55 (40%) in the red zone will be the statistics that best demonstrate how Dallas managed to lose this game despite nice raw numbers like 423 yards. Those raw yardage stats may help in the world of fantasy football, but like the Detroit game, there is a time and place where you have to take the fight to your opponent in a way that shows you have solutions built in precision and for whatever reason here down the stretch, the Cowboys seem to have lost their way.
There is no doubt Minnesota and Detroit have put game plans together to hit Dak Prescott repeatedly and to put the Cowboys offense into hurried discomfort. They do not look relaxed and composed now on these high-stress downs and while they were able to deal with the Eagles and Chiefs defenses with a little more success, we do continue to see that the pressure on the QB is becoming more and more of an issue.
In this game, Minnesota had to turn the heat up and up and just look at the stark differences from when he had time to throw versus the Brian Flores pressure packages:
Dak was pressured 27 times in this game and sacked twice. McCarthy was pressured just 10 times and not sacked at all. This is more of what we have seen from Thursday Night in Detroit and you can definitely see that the solutions are not coming as easy for the offense anymore. The attention CeeDee Lamb is getting is substantial and for whatever reason, the George Pickens show has not been close to what it was and now we wonder why that is being so well taken away. Things are moving fast for this offense and it all seems to lead us back to protection is becoming more and more of a problem.
That might be OK if the defense could generate any significant moments themselves, but they managed to allow the Vikings hapless offense to get into their end zone four times in four quarters and aside from that takeaway in the first quarter, there were no more turnovers or sacks all night long. Yes, Minnesota has guys all over the field who are scary players, but they had not scored this many points since September and they probably haven’t looked this comfortable in their offense with this young QB at any point yet.
But, that is what happens when teams play the Matt Eberflus defense. It just continues to get smacked around to the tune of 17 points in the 1st half and 17 points in the second half, too. There is no pass pressure, little coverage down the field, and they just can’t seem to get stops. They just can’t get stops in the red zone and give up the maximum amount of points every time.
The Eagles went 3 for 3 in the red zone with 21 points on three trips.
The Chiefs went 3 for 3.
The Lions went 4 for 5.
The Vikings went 3 for 4.
So, with this new defense where the personnel is different, Dallas has managed to allow 15 trips into the red zone and 13 touchdowns. 87% is an incredible recipe to get you defeated and when we talk about efficiency, we should start there. Dallas has generally been more productive than their opponents but it doesn’t matter. The offense does not cash in and settles for field goals and the opponents – usually with less production – gets the maximum amount of points on a regular basis.
I suppose that is where we find ourselves again. A tease of a team that seems to do a lot right at times, but unable to get the results because they are too inefficient. They are able to step up in a game against an opponent that seems better than them, but then are taken apart because they are just not consistently good enough to do things on a weekly basis.
In short, once again, we are back at this part of the story where they are good enough to tease and then bad enough to disappoint. They are different than last year’s team, but not better by any real stretch. They have lots of issues and are far from where it seems they should be. I suppose, in many ways, the Thanksgiving mirage should be treated as such and the larger sample tells us what we suspected all along:
The offense is not near precise enough to cover for a defense that lags behind. There is not enough consistent winning up front in either direction to suggest this is a true contender. But, there is also a stark reality that we continue to revisit all season:
For all of the good that head coach and quarterback have provided in 2025, they also have left too much meat on the bone to suggest that either are free from blame on any level.
The head coach has not dialed this offense nearly enough. He was getting almost 5 yards a carry on the ground in this game, but never pushed the Vikings around with his ground game enough to back off all of the blitzing. It felt like Javonte Williams has nobody behind him that they feel good about and therefore cannot pound the ball for any long period of time.
Then, the QB has to sort things and we are quick to sing his praises when he does. But, on this night, he looked like a fatigued QB who had a bad overall performance and was perhaps taking the best of the bad choices and throwing short of the sticks way too much. This leads to drive killing sequences where you play right into Minnesota’s expert hands.
In short, if this season truly is one where they go as far as coach and quarterback can take them, well, perhaps we got the answer again last night, loud and clear. With a coach who is willing to settle for field goals and a QB who can not make Minnesota pay, Dallas lost a game they couldn’t lose. The defense could not trouble a QB without confidence and an offense could not do better than 17% on 3rd down. Dak was pressured as much as he has been pressured in years and everyone looks upset again because the favored Cowboys let a team come in here and win a game that put a sword right in this season’s heart.
Change is something we are familiar with around here and all we know now is that changes are going to need to be made yet again. This defense is still miles away and now we know the offense isn’t special enough to cover those problems up. Dallas will not go to these playoffs and the rest of the schedule will be to simply play out the string.
They simply are just not good enough. Again.
