The Cowboys were not themselves in Week 2.
Expectations are high this year for the Dallas Cowboys, and a Super Bowl victory parade is on everybody's mind. With the first two weeks of the 2024 NFL season in the books, however, it is clear that America’s Team has work to do. Dak Prescott needs to be better, Ezekiel Elliott and the rest of the running backs need to do more, and the entire defense has to improve.
The Cowboys are still licking their wounds after a 44-19 beatdown at the hands of the New Orleans Saints. Mike McCarthy’s squad will have to turn things around quickly before their entire season falls apart. Let’s take a closer look at some key players and position groups that are most to blame for the Cowboys’ Week 2 disaster.
Dak Prescott needs to protect the football better
De Prescott is supposedly a franchise quarterback, yet his performance is anything but that of a franchise signal caller and leaves quite a bit to be desired. Prescott puts up decent counting stats and the occasional highlight reel play, but he seems to always come up short when his team needs him the most, and he also frequently makes head-scratching decisions and bad plays that lead to turnovers.
In this game, Prescott threw two costly interceptions that doomed the Cowboys. His team needed him to put them on his back to carry the day, and once again Prescott faltered. In a game as lopsided as this one, his two interceptions likely were not the sole contributor to the team's struggles.
Yet, they certainly didn’t help and, if he hadn’t caused these turnovers, the Cowboys would’ve had more momentum and opportunities to score points. He didn’t give his team the opportunities, and in fact, he took chances to score away from his team while giving the Saints momentum.
This is exactly what franchise quarterbacks cannot do, and yet that is what Prescott did. It would have been slightly more forgivable if he had at least recorded three or four touchdowns to offset the interceptions, but he failed to produce.
Prescott can no longer hide behind the excuse of not having a capable group of pass catchers either. Superstar wideout CeeDee Lamb is one of the best receivers in all of football, and might actually be the best. Lamb is a superstar who can get open against any coverage and give his quarterback a target to throw to. He has an incredible catch radius and is the ultimate bailout weapon. This makes him a quarterback's best friend, and Lamb was seemingly the only player on the Cowboys who didn’t struggle heavily in Week 2.
Yet, Lamb's presence makes Prescott's struggles even more glaring. There’s simply no excuse for the kind of performance that Prescott put on film this past weekend. He’ll have to watch the tape and find ways to elevate his game.
The unfortunate reality is that Dak Prescott does not appear to be a legitimate franchise quarterback, and the Dallas Cowboys will struggle until they find a difference-maker at the position, whether that is Prescott unlocking a new level of play and consistency, or if a change is made.
The running game was nonexistent
An even bigger culprit than Prescott was the Cowboys’ running game or lack thereof. The Cowboys got next to nothing from Ezekiel Elliott or Rico Dowdel, and that is unacceptable. While it is possible, and in fact likely that the way the game played out led to the Cowboys abandoning the run, this isn’t an excuse for their lack of production on the ground.
The simple fact is that if the Cowboys had produced in the running game earlier, it’s unlikely that the game would’ve gotten so out of control. If the game had been closer, the team wouldn’t have needed to abandon the ground attack. Either way you break it down, the running backs are responsible for their own lack of production.
The defense was horrendous
As much as the offense struggled, the blame cannot be placed solely on that unit for not putting up enough points. The Saints are a good team, but they aren’t one of the top five offensive units in the league. There’s simply no way that the Cowboys’ defense should have surrendered 40+ points.
This is an absolutely embarrassing performance by the Cowboys' defense, and they will need to be significantly better sooner rather than later. If the Cowboys want to make the playoffs, they must really be able to rely on their defense to keep games close. It doesn’t matter how well the offense performs if the defense is giving up points every time they’re on the field and leading to high-scoring shootouts.
I don’t doubt that Prescott and the running game at least have the ability to play at a championship level, but there are serious doubts in my mind about the team's defense, and whether that unit can elevate their performance to the required level. The Cowboys need to fix this side of the ball and they must do it fast, or else their season can blow up before it even gets started.
