DALLAS — The New Orleans Saints spoiled the home opener for the Dallas Cowboys, crushing them 44-19 in front of their home crowd. It didn’t take long for the blowout to feel much like the last time the Cowboys took the field at AT&T Stadium, losing in a similarly embarrassing fashion as their wild-card loss to Green Bay in January.
The blame game
After such a disappointing loss following a big win in the season opener, the question becomes, who do the Cowboys blame? Does this loss fall on the shoulders of head coach Mike McCarthy for not having his team prepared for their debut at home?
Is it quarterback Dak Prescott who deserves ire for throwing two interceptions and didn’t seem sharp while leading a punchless offense?
Should the front office take ownership for sleeping through the offseason and not ponying up the money to help the product on the field get better?
Perhaps this loss falls at the feet of new defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, who got out-schemed by an offense that falls under the San Francisco 49ers’ coaching tree, despite being hired to shore up that issue.
The answer feels simple, a little bit of all of the above played a role in the shellacking and presents Dallas with many more questions for their 2024 season than they perhaps expected to be asked so early in the campaign.
Simply put, the Cowboys were outcoached, outmanned, and outplayed, and the same problems from the last few years under McCarthy showed up in the ugly loss. Part of the humiliating loss is also on an upper management duo on Joneses who failed to adequately participate in one of the offseason’s most important paths to improving, free agency.
Add it all up and you get a beatdown where the Cowboys were outclassed from the start. It never felt like Dallas’ day.
Path of destruction
The Saints opened the game by going 80 yards in seven plays for a score. The drive was finished off by running back Alvin Kamara’s 5-yard rushing touchdown, one of the veteran's four scores in the contest. If it looked too easy on the initial drive, it was a sign of things to come.
New Orleans’ offense scored in one play on their next drive, a 70-yard strike from quarterback Derek Carr to Rashid Shaheed. The New Orleans offense does not have many big play threats and yet the Cowboys allowed the only home run threat to get behind the defense for the touchdown.
It got even worse as the Saints scored touchdowns on each of their first six drives of the game. The 35 points given up by halftime was tied for the worst by any defense in Cowboys team history. Throughout the game, Zimmer had no answer.
One week after the Cowboys produced six sacks, the defense in Week 2 barely put pressure on Carr, who had time to find open receivers. Carr only threw 16 passes but completed 11 for 243 yards in the game for a ridiculous 15.2 yards per completion. Against a leaky offensive line, All-Pro pass rusher Micah Parsons, and his defensive end running mate DeMarcus Lawrence, were nowhere to be seen.
Zimmer’s defense couldn’t stop the pass, and they weren’t any better against the run. Kamara ran for 115 yards and averaged close to six yards per carry. A defense that had trouble stopping the run under Dan Quinn, saw the same troubles in Week 2 under their new DC. At some point, it might be time to blame the players on the field.
The veteran defensive linemen that the Cowboys brought in didn’t help, nor did linebacker Eric Kendricks or rookie LB Marist Liufau, the latter of whom looked lost for most of the game. Second-year LB DeMarvion Overshown, who was so impressive in his NFL debut in Week 1 played sparingly, which remains difficult to understand.
Bringing field goals to a TD fight
The Dallas offense played better than the defense, but they still had their problems as well. While the Saints were scoring touchdowns, the Cowboys were putting drives together but stalling and kicking field goals.
While New Orleans was hitting on big plays and using their speed to attack the Cowboys’ defense, McCarthy’s offense was plodding down the field, picking up a few yards per play only to frequently run out of real estate in the red zone.
If it wasn’t for Prescott’s touchdown pass to wide receiver CeeDee Lamb on a botched tackle attempt by New Orleans, the offense’s day would have looked much worse. Lamb did most of the work on the second-quarter score, avoiding the tackle and taking it 65 yards to paydirt to give Dallas some signs of life.
But unsurprisingly, the Cowboys couldn’t run the ball with any of their three running backs and averaged just 3.2 yards per carry. That didn’t stop McCarthy from trying to establish the run, but the RBs just don’t have the juice, and the offensive line wasn’t good enough to consistently open holes, a problem for an offense that plans for the run to set up the pass.
Most of all, the loss on Sunday showed how apparent a lack of speed is hurting the Cowboys’ offense. Besides Lamb, there isn’t anyone on the offense that can scare a defense, and the Saints quickly figured out that slowing down Lamb means stifling the Dallas offense. After a first half where Lamb had five catches for 90 yards and a score, the All-Pro WR didn’t have another catch in the game.
Dallas didn’t have a Plan B to beat the Saints on either side of the ball in the blowout loss. Just as the Cowboys used the same script to throttle the Cleveland Browns in Week 1, the Saints used the same script good teams used to beat McCarthy’s teams in Week 2.
The Cowboys want to play bully ball, but when that doesn’t happen, they collapse like a house of cards. The bullies don’t like getting bullied, and the Cowboys found out again that they aren’t always the biggest kids on the block. The team needs to have an alternate strategy for when they get pushed, but the evidence continues to mount that they lack that ability.
Do you think the Cowboys can recover from their ugly Week 2 loss? Share your thoughts with Ben on X (formerly Twitter) @BenGrimaldi.
