Tag: 2024 Week 9

Cowboys have an every 5-week jinx that just sidelined Dak Prescott

The Cowboys will be without their field general for the time being. In a lost season, things keep getting worse like there’s a curse on the club. | From @KDDrummondNFL

Things have gone from bad to worse for the Dallas Cowboys in 2024, and it all started way back in August. First, the recent news. Cowboys QB Dak Prescott was forced to leave Sunday’s loss to the Atlanta Falcons. Initially, fan and media concern centered around his throwing hand, which FOX cameras intially caught bleeding following what is now known as his final drive for a while.

Soonafter though, it was shown how on his last pass, Prescott was seen grimacing as he attempted the throw, and favoring one leg. It was quickly reported to be a hamstring injury and Prescott was ruled out for the game. The speed of the decision along with Prescott’s own words post-game led many to believe it would be a multiple week injury and now those thoughts are confirmed.

NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero is reporting he will indeed be out for weeks, and for Cowboys fans who believe in such things, it’s the latest entry in the 5-week jinx of the 2024 season.

Prescott was injured in the club’s eighth game of the season, but Week 9. And though it hasn’t yet been confirmed whether there will be long-term impact, WR CeeDee Lamb suffered a shoulder injury in the game as well.

Going back five weeks to Week 4 was when the Cowboys lost LB Micah Parsons, DE DeMarcus Lawrence and WR Brandin Cooks in the 20-15 win over the New York Giants. That game was on September 26.

Five weeks prior? DaRon Bland was suffering from foot discomfort on August 21 and ended up having surgery on August 26. He still has yet to return to the mix, though he was close to returning prior to the bye week before suffering a setback.

It’s an uncanny rhythm to a season that has been ridiculously dysfunctional since January’s blowout loss to the Green Bay Packers during the wild-card round.

For those counting at home, the Cowboys inducted Jimmy Johnson into the Ring of Honor 45 weeks ago… nine times five.

Cowboys fall to Falcons, 27-21, drop to 3-5 as season is slipping away

The Cowboys lost their quarterback and lost the game. The season isn’t too far behind. | From @KDDrummondNFL

It’s tough for a fanbase to maintain hope for a season when their team isn’t winning. As long as there are games remaining on a schedule, anything is possible, but when a club continues to suffer major injuries to augment their self-inflicted wounds, sooner or later people stop believing.

And that’s for the ones who believed in the first place. The Dallas Cowboys lost quarterback Dak Prescott to a hamstring injury in the third quarter of their game against the Atlanta Falcons in Week 9. He wasn’t the only one who was knocked out of the contest, either. Wideout CeeDee Lamb had several instances where he was in clear shoulder pain.

In the end, it may not have mattered whether they were healthy for the full contest, as the Atlanta Falcons defense was able to corral the Dallas offense while their own O was efficient throughout a 27-13 win.

The defeat drops the Cowboys to 3-5 on the season, with back-to-back home dates against the Philadelphia Eagles and Houston Texans next up on the slate.

In this contest, Prescott had been playing well, completing 75% of his throws without turning the ball over. Rush acquitted himself well in relief, adding 115 passing yards and a late score to Jalen Tolbert to give Dallas a last-second chance until the on-side kick failed.

 

Cowboys Dak Prescott out for remainder of Falcons game, will Trey Lance play?

Dak Prescott has left the game and will not return. Who is his backup?

Things have gone from bad to worse for the Dallas Cowboys in their game against the Atlanta Falcons. Down two scores, the Cowboys will now try to mount a comeback without their field general, Dak Prescott.

On a play in the third quarter, Prescott injured his hamstring on a throw to the sideline, unable to step through the motion. After being tended to on the sideline during the ensuing Atlanta drive (in which they scored a touchdown), Prescott was ruled out.

Cooper Rush will takeover for the remainder of the game.This also means that Trey Lance, the emergency third quarterback, has a chance to enter his first game as a Dallas Cowboy since being acquired last offseason.

Rush would have to leave because of injury in order for Lance to be allowed to play the game.

Prescott’s day finishes 18 of 24 for 133 yards and a touhdown toss to running back Rico Dowdle. Prescott had a 101.6 passer rating for the game, his highest since the Week 4 win over New York.

He also ran several times in this game, including a team season-high 22-yard jaunt in the first half.

If Rush can’t bring the Cowboys’ back, they will fall to 3-5 on the season with back-to-back division games against the Philadelphia Eagles and Houston Texans up next, with both contests at AT&T Stadium. The Cowboys are 0-3 at home this season.

NFL update: Cowboys trail Falcons 14-10 at break, 1st half stats and highlights

A recap of the big moments from the first half along with stats and highlights.

The Dallas Cowboys have so many issues in 2024, even when they improve in certain categories, they can still find themselves trailing throughout the first half. In Week 9, Dallas traveled to the Atlanta Falcons. One would think that if quarterback Dak Prescott hadn’t thrown an interception, completed 10 of his first 11 passses and actually scrambled out the backfield that things would be going well.

Add in two sacks in a game without Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence, both by Carl Lawson and including a recovered strip sack, and one would dream of a substantial halftime lead. Nope. Despite those great things, Dallas finds themselves trailing the Falcons, 14-10 at the break.

Prescott’s scramble, for 22 yards and the longest Dallas run of the 2024 season, put them in position for a touchdown pass to Rico Dowdle.

Unfortunately coverage breakdowns by the Cowboys allowed a 36-yard touchdown from Kirk Cousins to Darnell Mooney that had given them an 11-point lead.

That was a fourth-down play, after the Cowboys had called a timeout to get organized. Suffice to say it didn’t work.

The Cowboys scored first on a Brandon Aubrey field goal, but a promising drive ended up in only three points because of a missed block on a screen by Zack Martin.

So even though the stats give hope, Dallas is still in their own way on enough of a regular basis to find themselves trailing for much of the game.

Is Trevon Diggs playing today? Injury news update for Cowboys CB

Here’s the latest status for the Cowboys’ Trevon Diggs for Week 9 vs the Atlanta Falcons. | From @KDDrummondNFL

Update: Trevon Diggs will in fact play on Sunday, he was not one of the inactives.

Trevon Diggs has had a trying week. Following last week’s frustrating loss to the San Francisco 49ers, the All-Pro cornerback came out the locker room to confront a media member of a tweet made during the contest. It was a bad look that eventually Diggs made amends for, but that wasn’t the end of Diggs’ time as the center of attention.

Diggs also added himself to a ridiculously long list of injured Cowboys when he missed practice on Wednesday with what ended up being identified as a calf tear. Then Diggs missed Thursday, and then Friday.  Duggs was given the game designation of questionable for Dallas’ Week 9 roadtrip to take on the Atlanta Falcons.

The Cowboys are now sitting under ,500, at 3-4 on the 2024 season, losers of two games in a row. The team came out of their bye week flat, and needed a fell-short fourth-quarter rally to make their game against the 49ers a respectable effort.

Now, that same group is traveling to Atlanta in to take on the Falcons and Kirk Cousins. Already missing all of their top edge rushers, the Cowboys have played all season without Diggs’ counterpart DaRon Bland and the last several weeks without his backup rookie Caelen Carson. With Bland out, stopping Cousins and the Falcons aerial attack without Diggs is probably too big of an ask.

Expecting a player who missed all three practices to play at all, much less at a high level, is asking for a lot.

Week 9 inactives will be announced approximately an hour and a half before kickoff.

Cowboys could have shocking $100M+ in cap space unavailable Week 9 vs Falcons

Through massive injuries and dead money, the Cowboys are missing 1/3rd of their salary cap in the matchup with Atlanta. | From @KDDrummondNFL

Conversations about the Dallas Cowboys almost inevitably center around the topic of money. Despite three decades without sniffing a championship, owner Jerry Jones has used his extreme marketing savvy and business acumen to sit atop the list of rich sports franchises year after year. When talk of building a better team comes up, his son is always crying broke about the limitations of the NFL salary cap and how it’s impossible for the team to spend on free agency because of money earmarked to pay their megastars.

The reality is Dallas looks at contracts as internal rewards for previous performance instead of speculation on future contributions and it keeps them from entering the market as true participants.

As for 2024, Dallas sits at 3-4 through eight weeks, hardly getting the expected bang for the buck from the players they’ve paid. Injuries are mounting and for various reasons they have a ton of cap space being taken up by players who won’t take the field in Week 9.

How much?

$82.6 million worth; barely under a third of the 2024 salary cap.

When combined with their $21 million in available space, that brings the total to $103.6 million of space that won’t be on the field in Week 9.

Led by DeMarcus Lawrence’s $20 million cap hit, Dallas has over 20 entries in their ledger of players who will not be able to contribute to the team against the Atlanta Falcons. Lawrence is IR, along with names like Brandin Cooks and Sam Williams.

There are known names who are on the active roster but will be made inactive on Sunday, including Ezekiel Elliott, DaRon Bland, and more than likely Trevon Diggs.

If Diggs (calf tear) plays, the number drops to $68 million, still a ridiculously high percentage of 2024’s salary cap of $255.4 million.

Player 2024 Cap Hit (millions) Reason
DeMarcus Lawrence $20.4 injury
Trevon Diggs $14.1 Injury
Brandin Cooks $10 injury
Ezekiel Elliott $6 Dead Money
Tyron Smith $6 Dead Money
Micah Parsons $5.4 Injury
Michael Gallup $4.3 Dead Money
Leighton Vander Esch $2.5 dead Money
Ezekiel Elliott $2 Inactive
Other dead money $1.8 dead money
Dorance Armstrong $1.5 dead money
Sam Williams $1.5 injury
Jordan Phillips $1.25 Injury
Marshawn Kneeland $1.24 Injury
DaRon Bland $1 Injury
Kelvin Joseph $0.75 dead money
Chuma Edoga $0.7 Injury
John Stephens $0.6 Injury
Amani Oruwariye $0.6 injury/dead
Nathan Thomas $0.5 injury
Earl Bostick $0.47 injury

 

Could Sunday be this 9-time Pro Bowler’s last in Cowboys uniform as trade deadline approaches?

Trading Zack Martin won’t even save the club $1 million on the cap, but could still be the move by Tuesday.

The Dallas Cowboys may soon be in a position to throw in the towel. There are certainly reinforcements coming, but the injuries have hardly been the only issue with the way the 2024 season has unfolded. A lame-duck approach to the coaching staff that spent the offseason trying to convince their roster to go all out despite star-player contract controversies of various magnitude had a negative impact.

And now sitting at 3-4 and traveling to the NFC South leading Atlanta Falcons for an early kickoff, things could be very dire in very short order. The question would then become, would Dallas become sellers at the trade deadline? And if so, would they offload Zack Martin?

Martin is in the final year of his contract, making just under $100,000 a week in salary after he had his base converted to a bonus to spread cap hit off into the future. The nine-time Pro Bowler and seven-time First-Team All-Pro guard has been underwhelming this season and it’s hard to tell which factor is most prevalent in his decline.

Martin is playing next to right tackle Terence Steele who is offering zero in pass protection, and also next to rookie center Cooper Beebe. At 33, decline is inevitable for someone who many consider a first-ballot Hall of Fame candidate, and his offensive line coach of the last two seasons, Mike Solari, does not seem to have his finger on the pulse of how to deploy his troops in the best way.

Any and all of those factors are at play, but the underlying point is Martin is set to hit free agency, and other than nostalgia, there’s zero reason for the Cowboys to not explore getting draft compensation from a team in the hunt and in need.

Is Micah Parsons playing today? Injury news update for Cowboys edge rusher

Here’s the latest status for the Cowboys’ Micah Parsons for Week 9 vs the Atlanta Falcons.

The Cowboys are now sitting under ,500, at 3-4 on the 2024 season, losers of two games in a row. The team came out of their bye week flat, and needed a fell-short fourth-quarter rally to make their game against the San Francisco 49ers a respectable effort.

Now, that same group is traveling to Atlanta in Week 9 to take on the Falcons and Kirk Cousins. Cousins, coming off an Achilles injury that submarined his 2023 season, has never been much of an escape artist, but he’s even more stationary this season. Unfortunately, the Cowboys haven’t been able to muster much of a pass rush this season. They notched just one sack against Snn Francisco and have just eight in their last four games.

Will they fare any better? It would certainly help if Micah Parsons were able to return from injury and course-correct his slow start to the season. But unfortunately, Parsons won’t have the opportunity to impact this week’s game.

Parsons was ruled out for a fourth consecutive contest as he is still dealing with a high-ankle sprain that knocked him out of the team’s Week 4 win over the New York Giants.

Parsons did not practice all week, and with Dallas entering the meat of their 2024 schedule, it’s a significant blow to their desire to right the ship. The Cowboys will return to AT&T Stadium next week, where they are 0-3 on the season, to face division rival Philadelphia.

With DeMarcus Lawrence and Marshawn Kneeland both on returnable IR, along with the season-ending preseason loss of Sam Williams, the pass rush is lacking significant punch, made worse by the free agent defections of Dorance Armstrong and Dante Fowler in the offseason.

Is Ezekiel Elliott playing today? Cowboys RB room controversy 2 weeks in row

A look at the Cowboys RB situation heading into Week 9 of the 2024 season. | From @KDDrummondNFL

With the run game struggling, Dallas looked to promote veteran free agent and practice squad member Dalvin Cook last week. A four-time Pro Bowler, Cook was signed at the end of the offseason and naturally had a ramp-up period to get in shape. During that time, concrete evidence was formed that the Cowboys running game was a disaster, worse than the year prior thanks to obvious blocking issues and questions about the quality of the backs who were on the roster.

Cook’s elevation brought the question of who would sit in Week 8, fellow veteran Ezekiel Elliott or youngster Deuce Vaughn. The answer turned out to be starter Rico Dowdle, who it was reported got sick the day of the game but was spotted in good spirits, signing autographs and generally acting like a not-sick person would. That created a storm of conspiracy theory talk, and instead of moving on, Dallas has chosen to ramp things up a notch by leaving Ezekiel Elliott home for the Week 9 trip to Atlanta.

On Saturday the club informed Elliott he was going to be made inactive for the game against the Falcons. Apparently that led to an elevated disagreement between he and the coaching staff to the point the club disciplined him by not allowing him to travel with the team.

Fans should remember, Elliott was brought back to the club after a year in New England under the umbrella of being great for team chemistry.

The Dallas Cowboys may not be a rudderless ship, but they certainly seems to be having trouble negotiating the rough waters of the 2024 season. What metaphor or analogy fits the circumstances best is still to be decided, but things certainly haven’t been handled with the calm and smooth manner one would associate with an organized organization. The running back situation of the last two weeks certainly supports the negative associations.

Cowboys schedule: Is Dallas playing today?

Is Dallas playing today? Here’s a look at the schedule and the games to come.

Will the Cowboys be on the field today in Week 9 of the NFL football schedule?

The Cowboys have been in a bit of a tailspin, losing both bread parts of their bye-week sandwich in inglorious fashion. Dallas was bludgeoned by the NFC runner-up Detroit Lions before the break, and then pummeled by the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers before a late comeback fell short after the break. Now they will return to the field to try and right the ship against the Atlanta Falcons in Week 9.

Fans won’t have to wait long to watch the Cowboys get into action, as they are in a rare early window matchup.

Kirk Cousins and the Falcons offense will get a chance to attack a woefully depleted Cowboys secondary.

Dallas is 3-1 on the road and 0-1 in the early window.

TEAM 2024 schedule

Week Date Opponent Time (CT) Result
1 Sep. 8 @ Cleveland Browns 3:25 p.m. W, 33-17
2 Sep. 15 vs New Orleans Saints Noon L, 44–19
3 Sep. 22 vs Baltimore Ravens 3:25 p.m. L, 28-25
4 Sep. 26 @ New York Giants (TNF) 7:15 p.m. W, 20-15
5 Oct. 6 @ Pittsburgh Steelers (SNF) 7:20 p.m. W, 20-17
6 Oct. 13 vs Detroit Lions 3:25 p.m. L, 47-9
7 BYE WEEK
8 Oct. 27 @ San Francisco 49ers (SNF) 7:20 p.m. L, 30-24
9 Nov. 3 @ Atlanta Falcons Noon TBD
10 Nov. 10 vs Philadelphia Eagles 3:25 p.m. TBD
11 Nov. 18 vs Houston Texans (MNF) 7:15 p.m. TBD
12 Nov. 24 @ Washington Commanders Noon TBD
13 Nov. 28 vs New York Giants (Thanksgiving) 3:30 p.m. TBD
14 Dec. 9 vs Cincinnati Bengals (MNF) 7:15 p.m. TBD
15 Dec. 15 @ Carolina Panthers Noon TBD
16 Dec. 22 vs Tampa Bay Buccaneers (SNF) 7:20 p.m. TBD
17 Dec. 29 @ Philadelphia Eagles 3:25 p.m. TBD
18 Jan. 5 vs Washington Commanders TBD TBD

*prime-time game