It was just one game, but Sunday’s win by the Cowboys over the previously-unbeaten Panthers is having ripple effects, both at The Star in Frisco and around the NFL.
Heading into Week 4, the Cowboys seemed like a mediocre squad to the casual observer, albeit one with some intriguing upside. Yes, they lost their season opener, but by just two points and to the defending (and intact) Super Bowl champs. They won Week 2, but needed a last-second field goal to do it. They rolled in their next game, but over an opponent that was clearly inferior. So a middle-of-the-road placement in the power rankings- 14th- was probably about right.
With a win over Carolina that was far more stylistically emphatic than the final score would indicate, though, Dallas has vaulted all the way to No. 6 on this week’s chart, according to NFL.com’s Dan Hanzus.
The top half of the leaderboard saw a lot of movement, with Arizona, the last of the undefeateds, claiming the top spot. The Chiefs, Rams, Browns, Raiders, and 49ers all took notable tumbles, helping to make room for the surging 3-1 Cowboys to climb eight slots.
In defending Dallas’s push up the rankings, Hanzus glosses over the “explosive Cowboys offense” in order to concentrate on the breakout play of the defense. In particular, he spotlights cornerback Trevon Diggs, he of the league-leading and franchise-best five interceptions in the club’s first four games.
He also points out, though, how pedestrian coordinator Dan Quinn’s unit looked in the fourth quarter, once Diggs was relegated to the sideline with back tightness. Diggs’s two picks led to 10 points for the Cowboys; his absence in the final frame allowed Sam Darnold to go 12-of-16 for 143 passing yards and 14 points in the Panthers’ too-close-for-comfort comeback bid. “The young playmaker’s presence on the field has quickly become essential,” Hanzus writes of the second-year phenom out of Alabama.
And while the Cowboys’ presence in the Top 10 should be taken with a grain of salt at not-quite-the-quarter-pole mark of the season, it’s a remarkable turnaround for the team that fell apart so thoroughly last season after a season-ending injury to quarterback Dak Prescott.
But in head coach Mike McCarthy’s mind, this season should only be judged on this season.
“Regardless of what happened the year before,” McCarthy said this week, “whether you come off an excellent season or a disappointing season, it really does start new. Clearly, in this pandemic era that we’re in- two years in a row, the training camps are different, the offseasons are different, we had a lot of changes during our offseason with player personnel and coaching staff- there’s still a newness.”
And McCarthy believes that the Cowboys’ start- while encouraging, to be sure- is only the base to build on, not the thing to be celebrated in and of itself.
“With all that put together, you still have to find ways to win. Winning in September is difficult. I think that the preparation period for an NFL football team is significantly different than in the past. Some people like it; I don’t. To prepare your team to play quality football, to get your play style to a point where you’re comfortable as a head coach and to get the quality of play to a point, it’s different in today’s world. Winning is a little more of a crapshoot in these early games… The games are incredible- the way they’re coming down to the wire and so forth- but is the quality of play where you want it to be? And that’s something I pay close attention to. So finding a way to win those games and to continue to grow as a team is critical, because that’s really the foundation for your season. You just look at the historical statistics of if you go 1-5 or 1-4; it’s very difficult to climb out of those holes. It will be interesting what the extra game gives to this season. I think it’s going to make for a really exciting first two weeks in January. We’re building a foundation for the success we want to have this year, and we’re off to a pretty good start with a 3-1 record.”
A 3-1 start to the season is indeed good. A No. 6 power ranking in early October is good.
But McCarthy and this year’s Cowboys have their sights ultimately set on something way beyond good.
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