No chance after 3 unsuccessful quarters

ARLINGTON, Texas – It is still 2:47 p.m. on this first day of autumn and the afternoon is turning into early evening. This should be my tip:

“Speechless in Arlington.”

The Cowboys were on their way to a third straight loss here at once-friendly AT&T Stadium, trailing by 22 points, fresh off a 44-19 loss to the New Orleans Saints, who could only score one touchdown and 12 points at home in a 15-12 loss to the Eagles on Sunday, and fresh off a 48-32 playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers that ended last season.

The Cowboys were on pace to allow the then-winless Baltimore Ravens 274 yards of rushing—151 of which went to running back Derrick Henry and another 87 to quarterback Lamar Jackson—despite knowing full well that Baltimore's game plan would be just that: run, run, run, as if the Ravens were some sort of modern-day Forrest Gump.

They were on pace to allow a combined 72 points in back-to-back home games three games into the 2024 season, with opposing quarterbacks completing just 11 passes (Derek Carr) and 12 passes (Jackson). But that's about all these guys had to do, as their teams combined for 464 yards rushing in the final two games.

And with so many minutes left in Game 3, the Cowboys had scored just one offensive touchdown in the final 175 minutes and 4 seconds of football, until 5:15 left in the second quarter of their 33-19 season-opening win over Cleveland.

Think about it. That's just four minutes less than nearly three complete games, 176 minutes, without scoring an offensive touchdown.

What was there really to say?

A shout out to kicker Brandon Aubrey, who came within a yard of tying the NFL record of 66 yards with his 65-yard field goal, the longest field goal in Baltimore kicker Justin Tucker's history, scoring half of the Cowboys' points to that point. Those came along with his 52-yard field goal, improving on his early career record by converting 15 of 15 attempts from 50-plus yards.

But just a footnote, right?

But in those final 10 minutes and 41 seconds, the Cowboys turned their performance into words that could not have been described in print. Their play was so inconsistent that with 2:36 left in the game, head coach Mike McCarthy said, “We had a chance.”

Say what? A chance? Are you kidding me?

But you had to see it to believe it. Yes, the team was 1-1 after two games in 2024, which led me to ask on Friday, “Who are these guys?” The ones we, along with maybe only half of the 93,566 people here and a nearly nationwide television audience, were planning to bury three games into the 2024 season. But then the Cowboys executed a nearly “flawless revival.”

Inexplicably, and to make these conflicting assessments even more confusing, the Cowboys were just one stop on a third-and-6 at the Baltimore 25-yard line away from forcing a punt and thus securing one final possession and a chance to tie or win the game they had trailed so significantly for nearly 58 minutes.

They had scored touchdowns on three consecutive possessions, thanks in part to recovering one of two onside kicks and making a three-and-out for only the second time in Baltimore's 11 possessions. And they were close to making another three-and-out, holding Jackson to a four-yard gain on the first attempt and taking Herny for no gain on the second attempt while Micah Parsons made one of his five tackles.

Timeout, Dallas. Plenty of time left. Get a stop. Force a punt. And still the 2:00 warning to work with. The Ravens have three wide receivers lined up. The Cowboys are in man coverage. You have to worry about Henry running right at them. You have to worry about Jackson making a save. That's what happens when the defense is so inept for nearly 50 minutes of the 60-minute game.

Instead, Baltimore has a line with three receivers on the right side, and Zay Flowers, who has only made two catches in the game, runs quickly to the right, Jackson completes the pass one step before Trevon Diggs rushes in, half an arm's length away from breaking up Jackson's nine-yard pass, only his twelfth^th of the game and Flowers' longest of the day.

“Yeah, that was just (messy) on my part,” Diggs said, despite having to fight through traffic from the two receivers to his right. “I still have to make that play. … At the end of the day, I have to make that play no matter what it is. I have to show up when the time comes, so that's on me.”

That sealed the “incongruent” 28-25 loss after three quarters were completely unacceptable and one quarter came out good. That dropped the Cowboys to 1-2, below .500 for the first time since opening the 2022 season with the 19-3 loss to Tampa Bay, and only the third time since opening the 2021 season with another loss to Tampa Bay, this time 31-29. The Cowboys finished all three of those seasons with a 12-5 record and won two of three NFC East titles.

And only the second time in the last 54 games of the regular season that they have suffered two defeats in a row?

The Cowboys continue to have trouble stopping the run. They have given up 456 yards to the running game in their last two losses, if you include the Saints' 190 yards, although the Eagles held them to just 89 yards in that 15-12 win, or just 3.0 yards per run. Gap control and setting the edge on the outside continue to be Dallas' problems. Tackling has been poor. Detection has been awful. The middle of the defensive front is weak.

“I think right now there are guys that just want to be Superman,” Parsons said. “People just have to have their own jobs, brother. I don't even want to be Superman. We don't need any Supermans at all. We just need 11 guys playing together, and right now it's just not in sync.”

And that's become a thing in Baltimore, too. The Cowboys have now lost six of the seven times they've faced the Ravens. And this is the fourth time the Ravens have rushed for more than 200 yards against the Cowboys: 250 in 2000, 265 in 2008, 294 in 2020, and now another 274. That's a total of 1,083 yards in four of those losses. That's 0.62 miles for perspective

And when all that happens, it's hard to put pressure on opposing quarterbacks. No sacks. A Parsons QB hit. One reason Jackson was able to complete 12 of 15 passes for 182 yards. And when you add up Derek Carr's 11 of 16 for 243 yards, that's 23 of 31 for 425 yards, three touchdowns, one interception, and an incredible QB rating of 134.81.

Hard to win. Hard to play good football for just one quarter. Hard to put pressure on the offense when the Cowboys offense has scored just one touchdown in nine straight quarters through the first three games of the season. That's not enough. Not today. Not two months from yesterday. And not 14 more days from tomorrow.

And now we're left with just four days to make improvements and just one full practice before we face the Giants on Thursday night, having at least given that hope three quarters of a lost cause.

“I mean, for me, it sucks,” Parsons sums up. “It's been a long year. I wish I had never experienced anything like this.”

But that is at least quite a lot.