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Cowboys got the win they desperately needed, but the same old problems remain

Vaseline September 27, 2024

Ralph Vacchiano

NFL reporter

There were signs of relief Thursday night in the visitors’ locker room at the Meadowlands, which were felt as far away as Texas. The Dallas Cowboys did what they desperately needed to do. They won a game and prevented their season from being a disaster.

But as big as the victory felt for the tired team, it wasn’t big enough to erase all their obvious problems. The Cowboys squeaked out a 20-15 win over a bad New York Giants team on a night when neither team generated much offense. The same known problems were still there and some new ones were added.

The win was absolutely “huge, especially when you compare it to the alternative,” as quarterback Dak Prescott said.

But …

“We feel great about what we accomplished,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said. “But I think it’s the fourth week in a row that we realize we still have a lot of work to do.”

Yes, they do, because the goal isn’t to narrowly avoid disaster against a Giants team they’ve beaten eight times in a row — and a team they beat twice last year by a combined score of 89-17 . Their goals are much loftier than that. They see themselves as a Super Bowl candidate.

They still don’t look anything like it.

“It’s a process,” Prescott emphasized. “We are not going to become complacent. We’re not going to get too excited about what we did tonight. It’s about building, and figuring out what we can do better at all stages.

“But with a win it’s a lot easier.”

Fair point. It matters that the mood in the Cowboys locker room was light after two consecutive ugly losses at home. It matters that they don’t have to worry about a loss for the next ten days until their next game in Pittsburgh, while Jerry Jones stands on the deck of a sinking ship shouting, “All is well.” If they had lost, the “alternative” Prescott talked about would have been ten days of outside panic, a million questions about what went wrong in a season about to begin, and a full fire lit under McCarthy’s already hot seat.

They avoided all of that and at least temporarily changed the narrative of their season and the feeling of a locker room that was on the verge of falling apart last week.

“It’s more joy here,” receiver CeeDee Lamb said. “You lose two in a row, you go through a phase where everyone is quite tense. You’re ready to play again and get it over with. It’s good for us to come out 1-0 this week. we needed it.”

They desperately needed a win – any win. But it only matters if they can actually fix what ails them.

Did the Cowboys impress with their win over the Giants?

And that’s a lot.

For example:

They still can’t run the ball. There were some signs of life in the running game in the second half with some big Rico Dowdle runs. But he still only rushed for 46 yards on 11 carries and the Cowboys still only had 80 total rushing yards. And Ezekiel Elliott was barely there Thursday night, rushing five times for 19 yards.
They are incredibly undisciplined. The Cowboys had 11 penalties for 89 yards — and that doesn’t include a 15-yard facemask penalty that was inexcusably called on Giants tight end Daniel Bellinger, the man whose facemask was pulled. They average eight penalties per match, making them the fifth most penalized team in the league.
The passing game seems out of sync. Lamb finally had a breakout thanks to a 55-yard touchdown catch. However, his other six catches totaled just 43 yards. And Prescott, who was an MVP candidate last year with a league-high 36 touchdown passes, is in game manager territory. He completed 22 of 27 passes for just 221 yards against a poor secondary that was missing two of its best cornerbacks. He is on pace for just 24 touchdown passes this year.
The run defense was better, but the pass defense was not. The good news is they held the Giants to just 26 rushing yards. The bad news is that Daniel Jones picked them apart for 281 passing yards. Their pass rush, as has been the case all season, was basically non-existent. And the Giants held the ball for more than 35 minutes. Dallas couldn’t get them off the field.

Now the injuries are also piling up. Micah Parsons left the game with pain and a suspected sprained ankle. He had to undergo an MRI on Monday morning. DeMarcus Lawrence injured his foot, although he promised to “be back soon.” Even linebacker DeMarvion Overshown briefly left the game with an undisclosed injury. That’s three big blows for a defense already playing without cornerbacks DaRon Bland and Caelen Carson.

All of these things are concerning and all need to be addressed quickly because the Giants (1-3) were a pushover compared to what comes next. In their next three games (over four weeks), the Cowboys (2-2) play the Steelers (3-0), Lions (2-1) and 49ers (1-2) – and only the game against the Lions has started . At home. And the Eagles (2-1) and Texans (2-1) are also here for Thanksgiving.

The Giants may not have been able to take advantage of the Cowboys’ struggles, but it’s a good bet those other teams will.

That’s a problem, even if to them it felt like a problem for another day. The most important thing on Thursday evening was that they felt good about themselves for the first time in three weeks. And they hoped this was enough to lead to better things.

“I’ve played on a few different teams, and some of them just get heated when you get going,” Prescott said. “That’s what we want to do. That’s what this competition is all about: it gets exciting at the right time – building up. It’s about the process: trust in the process, regardless of the results.”

The lawsuit yielded a victory, but it was only a band-aid for their larger problems. The next step in the process should be actually addressing their problems – and not denying that they are still there. Otherwise, this will only be a short-lived reprieve for the Cowboys, and they’ll soon start feeling miserable about themselves again.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL reporter for FOX Sports. He covered the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York for the past six years, and covered the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News for 16 years before that. Follow him on Twitter @RalphVacchiano.