The Cowboys early game on Sunday feels like just another reminder of how far behind in the NFC East they really are.
When the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Commanders meet on Sunday afternoon in Landover, Maryland, it will be the 127th all-time regular season meeting between these two teams in a series that began in 1960. The Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles have also met 127 times, with the Eagles marking the occasion in Week 10 by becoming the fourth visiting team of 2024 to win at AT&T Stadium. Followed up with a home win over the Commanders, the Eagles are now in sole possession of first place in the NFC East at 8-2. They are firmly in a two-team race with the Commanders in second place at 7-4, with the Cowboys a very distant 3-7 in third place a game ahead of the basement-dwelling 2-8 Giants. All these teams can do in their remaining matchups with Philadelphia or Washington is play spoiler, which the Cowboys will try on Sunday having yet to prove they’re even capable of doing that with backup QB Cooper Rush.
Sunday will be the Cowboys’ first game in this rivalry going up against former defensive coordinator Dan Quinn as the Commanders’ head coach. Even though the Cowboys have won five of their last six against Washington, it stands as yet another reason for this game to be one of their biggest servings of humble pie all year – just in time for Thanksgiving against another division opponent four days later.
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The Cowboys stagnant offseason that has made the 2024 season a colossal waste of time for everyone involved becomes even more numbing when compared to the immediate results the Commanders are getting from their offseason acquisitions and draft class. Jayden Daniels at quarterback is obviously the highlight here, anxious to show the Cowboys first hand they can no longer just rely on having the best QB in the division to win games. Daniels appears here to stay as a real dual-threat for a franchise that has not had this much excitement at the most important position in sports in over a decade. Daniels paired with first year offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury have burst onto the scene as one of the most surprising but electric QB and play-caller duos in the league.
With Quinn in charge of a completely remade defense led by veteran LB Bobby Wagner as the leading tackler and former Cowboy Dante Fowler Jr. as the team leader in sacks with 8.5, the Commanders have a lot of ways they can beat teams. When was the last time we said that about the franchise from the nation’s capital? They also have one of the most improbable wins of the season at home, where they are 4-1 with a one-point loss to the Steelers, when another former Cowboy Noah Brown caught a tipped Hail Mary on the last play of the game to beat the Bears.
It is no accident that in a division which will continue its streak of not having a repeat winner over the last 19 years, the Commanders are in contention to win it for the first time since 2020 while the Cowboys are at risk of finishing in last place for the first time since 2015. The Commanders had just seven wins the last time they won the East over the 6-10 Cowboys and Giants, but now will be playing for their eighth win already in week 12. With a home game against the Titans to follow as well as the season finale being in Jerryworld, and games against the Saints and Falcons left on the schedule, the Commanders are in great position to win at least ten games for the first time since drafting Robert Griffin III in 2012.
Not only are the Commanders seeing their activity in the offseason pay off on the field, but they are doing so in all the ways that make them a ten-point favorite against the Cowboys on Sunday. The last Washington win over Dallas at home was by a wide margin at 26-6, but it came in something of a Week 18 throw away game for a Cowboys team on their way to the playoffs in 2022. The last Washington win by ten points or more in this series, in a game where both teams had their starting quarterback, was the 2012 season finale that sent them to the playoffs instead of Tony Romo’s Cowboys.
If most of this just feels like a complex way to say the 2024 Cowboys are historically bad, that’s because it is. All of the simpler ways to describe this team that will not even sniff a playoff berth and their futility have been used up. Matched up against a team that can push the ball downfield with Terry McLaurin without having to worry much about the Cowboys’ safeties helping in coverage, and run the ball efficiently on the edge with Austin Ekeler and Brian Robinson to expose their lack of defensive line depth. They also get after the quarterback to try and force Rush into turnovers like the three he had in his first start against the Eagles, or one on Monday night that should have gone as two (Rush’s fumble was recovered by Tyler Guyton before being fumbled again, crediting the turnover to the left tackle), it is truly impossible to think of anything that is going to go all that well for the Cowboys in their next game.
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In the span of three weeks, they have a chance to lose two divisional games and drop their NFC East record to 1-2 with the hollowest of wins against the Giants by losing to both former OC Kellen Moore and now former DC Quinn. The Cowboys certainly can’t prove any of their on-field decisions have worked this year if they had any aspirations of winning games, something us fans were apparently silly to expect on the heels of three straight 12 win seasons and an owner/GM that declared the currently 3-7 2024 team “all in”. They are also facing an uphill climb to prove the right people are in place to navigate this sudden rebuild and get the right new coaches and players that will be needed to turn things around in the offseason. Yet another blowout loss to the Commanders, which would be the Cowboys’ sixth in a row, could feel like a last straw of this team being vaguely watchable for even the diehards that can’t help themselves on a weekly basis.
Given that the Cowboys will still see the Commanders and Eagles again after week 12, as well as the Bengals and Buccaneers with better records than them, the Cowboys’ are in real danger of finishing the season in the 3-5 win range. Getting to four wins would merely match 2015’s lost season, but the record books have to be dusted off all the way back to 1989 to find a season they won less than this.
Hope for a fourth win has remained in the Giants game on Thanksgiving, with New York turning to Tommy DeVito now at quarterback, but can the Cowboys pick themselves up off the mat just four days after a potentially embarrassing loss at the Commanders? This feels like the most realistic question everyone around Dallas will be asking about this team by the middle of Sunday afternoon.
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This game will also strangely be the fourth time since 2020 that Dallas faces Washington with a backup QB. Both games in Mike McCarthy’s first season were started by Andy Dalton, with the Commanders winning 25-3 at home and 41-16 on Thanksgiving in Arlington. Their only win with a backup against the Commanders came when this week’s starter Cooper Rush beat them 25-10 at home in 2022. Rush was sacked just once, threw a pair of touchdowns to Michael Gallup and CeeDee Lamb, and did enough to turn a narrow 12-7 halftime lead into a more comfortable 25-10 win. The Cowboys leaned on a Quinn-led defense that got interceptions from Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland and two turnovers on downs to keep the Commanders off the scoreboard for the final 37:05 of play. Given the Cowboys struggles protecting the ball and limiting big plays this season, as well as their appetite for second half meltdowns, following a similar game plan to victory is not in the cards for this upcoming game.
The Cowboys will have to try to establish Rico Dowdle two weeks after declaring he is their lead running back but getting him just ten carries in the Monday night loss versus the Texans. If Dowdle can help the offense stay in more manageable situations against a defense that ranks second worst in yards per carry allowed, only a fraction ahead of the Giants, it will be Dallas’ only chance to shorten the game. In a season where Cowboys fans have had so few things to smile about, finally getting the run game working against their former DC who’s Achilles heel was always defending the run over his time in Dallas may be worth at least a smirk. It would also allow the Cowboys to continue getting a good evaluation of some receivers and tight ends further down the depth chart that appeared against the Texans, like Luke Schoonmaker, Brevyn Spann-Ford, Jonathan Mingo, and Ryan Flournoy.
This group does not stack up in talent level or experience to a Commanders offense that picks and chooses their opportunities to take shots downfield with lethal precision. Daniels is the third best QB in the league in average air yards differential, meaning when he pushes the ball deep it’s often complete. Daniels is doing so with an average intended air yards of 7.5 which is middle of the pack for NFL passers, and has the ninth best completion percentage in the league right now.
Unlike the Cowboys, the Commanders do a good job of staying out of third downs too often, which is advantageous to them as they’ve converted the seventh fewest of all teams this year. By way of it becoming a volume stat, the Cowboys actually lead the league in third-down conversions. If they can widen this gap enough to dial up pressure defensively on Daniels in some obvious passing situations, win the field position game to get on the scoreboard early, and somehow create a takeaway or two, the Cowboys have a path to playing spoiler against the Commanders.
As humbling as it is to be talking about the Cowboys as a mere spoiler candidate for a division game in week 12, this is a team no longer trying to sell anyone on playoff hopes and more publicly accepting the reality of this being a disastrous season.
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As the focus shifts to how well a lot of young players can handle different game situations and measure up to better competition, the Commanders are surprisingly a much better measuring stick than most predictions expected here at the end of November. How much a Cowboys team that hasn’t been in a one-score game since the first week of this month, and not on the winning end of any game since October 6th, can step up in this situation is what’s on the line Sunday.
With a loss, the Cowboys would also be at risk of getting swept by both the Commanders and the Eagles by dropping their first game to both division contenders. Washington is the only team to win both matchups against McCarthy in a season when they beat Dalton twice in the strangeness of that 2020 no-offseason year. Prior to that, the Cowboys have not been swept by any division opponent since Dak Prescott’s rookie season. Dallas lost just three games the entire regular season that year, but two were to the New York Giants in Week 1 at home and Week 14 on the road in a Sunday night game. The common theme here is the Cowboys only being this glaringly worse than their closest rivals when they don’t have an established starting QB. Prescott has not lost to the Giants since his first season.
It’s well understood that this will be the case for the merciful remainder of the 2024 campaign, but the more alarming thing is that the Cowboys never felt like a team that was on pace with this year’s Commanders or Eagles squads even with Prescott in limited action. The notions of what this Cowboys franchise can hang their hat on as things they do well are being rewritten day by day and week by week as these losses pile up, with Sunday possibly being a new low point as they face off against former players and coaches playing for nothing but pride.