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Fool the Cowboys faithful once, shame on you. Fool them 30 times? That’s just what it means to be a Dallas fan.
Here we go again. Dallas rolled into another season with the same tired script – this was supposed to be The Year. Dak Prescott, they said, is in his prime. The defense got an overhaul. The offense was going to be explosive. Hopes were sky-high heading into 2025.
That’s a lot of confidence for a team that finished 7-9-1 last season. Prescott even wore a Super Bowl XXX shirt during training camp – the last time Dallas actually won it all. Owner Jerry Jones wasn’t shy about expectations either.
“Contend for a Super Bowl,” Jones said earlier this summer. “Those are the kinds of things that I don’t believe are… outlandish or a reach to expect.”
About that. Sunday night’s season opener turned into a 28-20 beatdown at the hands of the division-rival Giants. Maybe Dallas should aim lower for now. Like, don’t give up touchdowns on three straight possessions. Or don’t let New York run the exact same play four times in under two minutes and still not adjust.
A Humbling Night in New Jersey
“As a football team, we were pretty poor,” head coach Brian Schottenheimer admitted afterward. “Just give Coach [John] Harbaugh and his team a bunch of credit. They were the more physical team tonight. That’s certainly not our standard… This is a humbling business, and we got humbled.”
Where do you even begin with a performance like this?
There’s blame everywhere you look. The defense deserves the harshest criticism, and it’s earned every bit of it.
New defensive coordinator Christian Parker’s unit looked lost. Overmatched on quick strikes, gashed on long, methodical drives too. The most embarrassing sequence came in the fourth quarter, with Dallas still within striking distance at 21-14. Jaxson Dart found running back Devin Singletary wide open in the left flat – not once, not twice, but over and over. Singletary eventually capped it off with a touchdown, finishing off New York’s second straight second-half drive that lasted more than eight minutes.
“He’ll learn from it, we’ll learn from it,” Schottenheimer said of Parker. “He’s gonna be hardest on himself anyways, he and the defensive staff. But at the end of the day, when you look at the numbers, I mean, they were 4-of-4 in the red zone. They were 9-of-11 with a kneel down on third down. It’s just not good enough. And so we gotta figure out why, and we gotta do it in a hurry.”
Offense Wasn’t Much Better
Prescott and the offense had their own issues, especially before halftime. The killer moment? An ill-advised throw that Prescott underthrew while trying to just get it out of bounds. Instead, it turned into an interception. New York capitalized immediately – 55 yards in 29 seconds, scoring right before the half.
Then it got worse. The Giants opened the third quarter with an 8-minute, 1-second drive, turning a 7-7 game into a 21-7 lead. Dallas never even touched the ball during that stretch.
“That’s unfortunately what we call a double dip,” Schottenheimer said, “and they double-dipped us.”
Prescott actually did fine when given the chance – Dallas scored every time he touched the ball in the second half. Problem is, that only happened twice. New York controlled the ball for nearly 22 of the final 30 minutes, running Dallas’s offense right out of the building. You can’t make plays from the sideline. Prescott finished with just 175 yards passing on 22-of-34 attempts, two touchdowns, and that one costly interception.
“It’s one game. This is a long year,” Prescott said. “We’ve got to make sure we use it as a lesson: stick together. One of two things can happen. We can get better from it, or we can allow it to derail us. And I know what I’m gonna do.”
Not a Friendly Road Crowd
Usually, when the Cowboys travel, their bandwagon fans outnumber the home crowd. Not this time. Big Blue nation showed up in force at MetLife Stadium.
Dallas fans talked plenty of trash walking in. Walking out was a different story entirely – considerably quieter.
“We lost mile 1 of a 17-mile marathon, and we have to be better,” Schottenheimer said. “We will be better. The only way to do that is to get back to work.”
Next up: another divisional test, this time at home against Washington. It’s still a long season. Dallas could still find a way to hoist a Lombardi Trophy in February. But performances like this one make that awfully hard to picture right now.
“It sucks to lose. It damn sure sucks to lose the first one to this team in a division game, but [we’re] still optimistic,” Prescott said. “That doesn’t change our goals, doesn’t change how we feel about our team.”
It probably won’t change how Cowboys fans feel about their team either. But at some point, after enough nights like this one, you have to wonder how many more it takes before those questions start getting harder to ignore – for the team, and for the fans who keep believing.
