The Dallas Cowboys lost for the third time in four games and everything has gone wrong for them at the wrong time. Quarterback Dak Prescott hasn’t been the same since missing time with a calf injury. The offensive line gets a new starting five weekly it seems, and the defensive line is out so many players their best edge rusher is actually LB Micah Parsons. The Cowboys are now in a race with the Philadelphia Eagles for the NFC East, and it’s time for them to turn it around.
Unfortunately this has been a trend for Dallas under Prescott. Dallas has never made the playoffs when they had a losing record during the three-games-in-11-days stretch culminating in the Thanksgiving holiday.
In 2016, and 2018 Dallas swept all 3 games in that time period and won the division twice. In 2017 they lost to the Philadelphia Eagles and the then San Diego Chargers by a combined score of 65-15. In 2019 the Cowboys were swept by the New England Patriots, the Buffalo Bills, and the Chicago Bears. In 2020, an Andy Dalton lead Dallas team beat the Minnesota Vikings before losing to the Washington Football team by 25, and the Baltimore Ravens by 17. They were home watching the playoffs all three of those seasons.
If the Cowboys can’t fix this trend, they will be watching the playoffs from home yet again, and it will have been 26 years since the Cowboys had made an NFC Championship Game, let alone the Super Bowl.
A team can learn a lot from their first losing streak of the year, and here are some examples of what we learned about this team.