Dak Prescott did not finish Sunday’s 27-21 Cowboys defeat to the Atlanta Falcons. This is not why his team lost.
Prescott’s departure merely hastened a narrative that began unfolding sometime between Jerry Jones’ decision to hire Mike McCarthy as head coach and his decision to let the embattled play caller sweat through a lame duck season this fall. It accelerated when Jones mentioned he’d go “all in” this offseason before spending the first week of free agency watching his free agent starters depart. It added more fuel around the time Jones’ inability to lock down his homegrown stars in a timely fashion led to a contract standoff with Prescott that eventually left Dallas to pay out the most guaranteed money in NFL history.
But the ending hinted at despite a 3-2 finish has become a full on spoiler. The 2024 Dallas Cowboys are cooked.
Sunday marked a third straight loss against an NFC contender, dropping Dallas to 3-5 with a game against the surging Philadelphia Eagles waiting in Week 10. Whatever goodwill came with more than 450 yards of offense against the Pittsburgh Steelers has been fully vacated. The Cowboys are bad. Their only hope of getting better relies on both DaRon Bland and Micah Parsons coming back and creating an elite defense around them.
This defense, right here:
Adding two All-Pros to the mix will certainly help, but… hooooo buddy, they’ll need to be nearly superhuman to give this team what it needs. Kirk Cousins threw three touchdown passes Sunday. One was a perfectly placed back-shoulder throw to Drake London. The other two were to wide open targets who hardly broke a sweat in the end zone.
Throw it where they ain't, @KirkCousins8 💰
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) November 3, 2024
FOX | NFL+ pic.twitter.com/5GoEGj1N5Q
Things were brutal even before getting to an offense that failed to create space for its quarterback against a team that had six sacks in its first eight games. Prescott was officially hurt on a non-contact throw in the third quarter. That’s brutal luck, but Dallas is lucky things weren’t worse.
A lack of open options and constantly collapsing pockets — against the league’s 32nd-ranked pass rush! — meant he was left to take damage all afternoon. He was sacked three times, hit eight more and forced to scramble throughout the game.
Rico Dowdle averaged better than six yards per carry and it didn’t matter because his offense was stuck in comeback mode from the second quarter on. A four-point halftime deficit became 11 because McCarthy called a high degree of difficulty fake punt the Falcons saw right through, leading to a short field and a five-play touchdown drive.
hell yeah Mike McCarthy, asking his punter to throw a back-shoulder fade to his third-string cornerback pic.twitter.com/ryVQAvfuWd
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) November 3, 2024
This all led to an obvious conclusion in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score suggests. CeeDee Lamb finished the game nursing what appeared to be an upper body injury but had just 47 receiving yards on 12 targets — fewer than four yards each time his number was called. He, Dowdle and tight end Jake Ferguson combined for 64 percent of the team’s total offense and its lone pre-garbage time touchdown. The reinforcements this team needed — whether up front, in a pass rush that sacked or hit Kirk Cousins only six times or among the skill players — simply weren’t there.
This had a ripple effect we’ve seen throughout the season. Prescott underwhelmed on the field, continuing a streak where the NFL’s top-paid quarterback struggles to play like a top 20 one. He averaged just 5.5 yards per attempt on a day where his average pass went just 3.9 yards downfield. His -2.7 expected points added (EPA) marked the fifth time in eight games where he’s had a negative impact on the field.
The support network he needs is no longer in place. Prescott, to his credit, seems well aware of this.
Dak knows…. pic.twitter.com/xq5g4NAC2j
— Shan Shariff (@1053SS) November 3, 2024
The Cowboys are undermanned in 2024 thanks in large part to the salary cap squeeze that forced them into spectator mode through the bulk of free agency. Dallas has money to spend in 2025, but not a ton — about $29 million, per Over The Cap — and that’s when Zack Martin is set to hit free agency and Parsons would, logically, sign a big money extension. There may not be a one-year fix to this.
For now, the Cowboys just sorta exist. Good enough to avoid a top-10 draft pick and bad enough to get ground into dust by the NFC’s actual contenders. That’s what Jones will have to sell to his next head coach this offseason. He’d better have one hell of a pitch.
