According to reports, a football game was played at AT&T Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Someone should have let the Cowboys know about this so they could show up.

In all seriousness, this game went as terribly as you could have predicted for the Cowboys. There was a lot of hype surrounding this game, the third year in a row that the Lions had traveled to Dallas with the Cowboys in search of their third straight victory. Last year’s match was of course a nail-biter and ended in controversy. This game promised to be filled with fireworks.

It was indeed filled with fireworks. However, only on the part of the Lions, who dominated this match almost from the start. Dallas won the toss and elected to take the ball to start the match, as they have done in recent weeks. The offense got off to a good start, but as has been the case for most of this year, the drive fizzled out and Brandon Aubrey came in to make a field goal.

The Lions took the field and immediately paid tribute to last year’s game, with extra offensive lineman Dan Skipper reporting as eligible before David Montgomery ran five yards on first down. Then Detroit started getting revenge for last year’s loss. Jared Goff hit Tim Patrick with a shot from 45 yards out, and a few plays later Montgomery pinned off defenders for a touchdown.

The Cowboys tried to respond and once again their offense started moving the ball well. They reached the red zone with relative ease, but then everything fell apart. For the second week in a row, Dak Prescott threw a pick while targeting CeeDee Lamb in the end zone.

That’s when things went off the rails for the Cowboys. Detroit didn’t get a field goal until the turnover, increasing their lead to 10-3, but the Cowboys punted on their next two drives, with a Lions touchdown in between.

Another field goal gave the Lions a 20-3 lead, setting up a series for the Cowboys that felt like the end of the game. After an incompletion to Lamb and a short pass to Jalen Tolbert, Dallas had to go for it on fourth-and-2. in the second quarter. The play call was a slow-developing pass to KaVontae Turpin, whose small frame was overcome by the defender who broke up the pass.

Six plays later, the Lions thundered into the end zone again. A 79-yard kickoff return by Turpin gave the team a field goal to cut the score to 27–6 at halftime, but this game was over. Anyone watching the game could tell from the players’ body language that the Cowboys checked out early, while the Lions – who continued to call trick plays throughout the fourth quarter – were determined to hurt their opponent.

Defensively, the Cowboys couldn’t get a stop to save their lives. That’s not exactly a shock considering how many starters they are currently missing and how talented this Lions offense is. It was still disheartening to see so many open receivers and so little opposition to the run.

The foul was a much bigger problem. Dallas entered this game second in pressure rate allowed (meaning only one team gave up fewer pressures) and Detroit’s defense was 28th in pressure rate. Despite this, Prescott was pressured on almost every play and rarely had a clean pocket to throw from. On the rare occasions he did, Prescott seemingly had no one to throw to. Even after Lions superstar Aidan Hutchinson went down with a gruesome leg injury, the Lions continued to eat away at this offensive line.

This game had all the hallmarks of a nightmare scenario for the Cowboys, right down to the resurgence of the debate above the windows in an east/west stadium with no curtains. Jalen Tolbert dropped a deep shot from Prescott late in the game, and he looked like he was blinded by the sun as he looked back to catch it. Later, Prescott’s second interception of the day came on a play where he stared straight into the sun as a Detroit defender advanced toward him.

It got so bad that Prescott and a few other starters were pulled early in the fourth quarter. It made no difference as Cooper Rush threw a red zone pick of his own and Turpin later fumbled the ball, giving the Cowboys five turnovers on the day to zero from the Lions.

In this match, nothing went right for the Cowboys, who still haven’t won a game in their home stadium this calendar year, having previously been undefeated here. The problems run deeper than an absent home field advantage, however, as the Lions utterly outmatched this team in every facet of the game. That would have been unthinkable three years ago, but now the Cowboys are forced to wrestle with their position in the NFC.

And if that’s not bad enough, they’re now heading into their bye week with all this negative energy right before they travel west to take on the 49ers. Oh yeah, it could be a very long October in Dallas.