Dallas Is 0-3 in Primetime and Out of Excuses — Lucky for the Cowboys, Monday's Opponent Is Worse

Two weeks ago the Cowboys were a .500 team with a Super Bowl shrug. Now they're 2-4, coming off consecutive losses to Tampa Bay and Green Bay, and their head coach is spending his Mondays explaining effort instead of results. Dallas spotted the Packers a 17-0 first-half hole on Sunday night and lost 23-13, a week after a 24-16 home dud against the Bucs. Brian Schottenheimer's line since taking the job is 9-13-1, and "the effort is right, the fight is right, but mistakes are killing us" is not a sentence that ages well in Dallas.

Stephen Jones went out of his way to say the organization "absolutely" believes in Schottenheimer. That's the kind of public backing that tends to arrive right before it becomes a talking point every single week.

The numbers behind the slide

Dak Prescott's season line still looks respectable — 1,639 yards, 10 touchdowns, five interceptions, a 90.1 rating — but the last three games tell the real story: a 77.4 rating, 6.5 yards per attempt and a touchdown rate cut nearly in half. He threw two picks in Green Bay. The offense has become one-dimensional in the least efficient way possible: 273.2 passing yards per game (top-five in the league) against 76.0 rushing yards per game, 26th in football. CeeDee Lamb is doing volume-lifter work at 8.0 catches and 96.2 yards per game, with George Pickens a legitimate second option at 71.3 yards per game. Everything else is Prescott dropping back 41 times a night and hoping.

The primetime split is uglier still. Dallas is 0-3 under the lights, averaging 16.3 points with a minus-8.7 differential. The defense allowing 26.5 points and 389 yards per game isn't helping, and the secondary has been patched together all year — Caelen Carson was waived this week, Juanyeh Thomas signed as reinforcement.

Now the part that changes the season

Philadelphia is 2-4 too, and the Eagles' problems are worse. Jalen Hurts is done for the year after blood clots were found in his lungs, and Tanner McKee — 215 yards, one touchdown, no picks, 57.8% completion in a loss to Carolina — takes over. The Eagles are averaging 17.7 points and 273.5 yards per game, with a run game producing 82.2 yards a contest despite Saquon Barkley averaging 5.1 yards per carry. Our own power ratings have Philadelphia 32nd of 32 teams, nine-plus points worse than Dallas.

That's the context for a Monday night at Lincoln Financial Field where the Cowboys are roughly a 4.5-point road favorite with the total at 44.5. A month ago that line would have been unthinkable. It's also the softest landing spot Schottenheimer could have asked for: a division rival with a backup quarterback, a hostile-but-nervous home crowd, and a defense that can be thrown on.

Jerry Jones isn't sitting still

The owner said this week the Cowboys "could do something" before the deadline to help this year's team, and Dallas has already been active — Joey Porter Jr. arrived in late September, and the rumor mill has connected them to Arizona pass rusher Josh Sweat. That's the behavior of a front office that thinks the NFC East is still winnable. At 2-4 with Washington at 1-4 and the Eagles reeling, it is.

The honest read

None of this fixes Dallas. The run game is a rumor, the defense can't get off the field, and the Week 7 injury report isn't out yet, so the depth questions in the secondary remain unanswered. But the Cowboys spent the last two weeks hearing their coach questioned and their season written off — and they now get a Monday night against the one team in the division in worse shape than they are. In a race nobody seems to want to lead, that's not nothing.

Lose this one, and the trade deadline conversation changes entirely.