ARLINGTON, Texas -- The 2024 Dallas Cowboys are experiencing whiplash.
Following three consecutive 12-win seasons from 2021-2023, the 2024 squad fell to 3-7 after a 34-10 "Monday Night Football" defeat against the Houston Texans, their fifth loss in a row. Dallas is off to their worst 10-game start since 2020 when quarterback Dak Prescott broke his ankle, and with Prescott on injured reserve following hamstring surgery, the Cowboys are seeing similar results. However, the current five-game losing streak the 2024 squad is on is the team's longest since the 2015 season. That's the year before Dallas had the fourth overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft and selected Prescott in the fourth round.
The Cowboys won 16 consecutive homes games not too long ago, and now they are on a six-game losing streak at home, including the postseason. During this six-game home losing streak, Dallas has become the first team in NFL history to trail by at least 20 points in at least six consecutive home games. Safe to say frustration is ever present.
"It's very frustrating. It's frustrating for everybody, frustrating for players, frustrating for coaches," Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said postgame on Monday. "I know it's disappointing for the fans. We have a lot of moving parts going on, and we just have to be cleaner and more detailed in certain spots. We're not playing well enough, executing well enough, coaching well enough to overcome some of the mistakes we're making at the critical times of the game. Even in the first half, we had some opportunities there, you know, to get some more points and didn't get it done. We just have to play cleaner in these tight spots, and we did not do that tonight."
It could be easy for a team to tap out in a stretch like the Cowboys are going through right now, but when they trailed 14-0 in the first quarter, Dallas fought back to get as close as seven twice, 14-7 and 17-10, in the first half. The Cooper Rush-led Cowboys offense ran out of steam in the second half, which doesn't come as a surprise.
"Yeah, I thought they fought. Absolutely. We're just, you know, our problem isn't effort. It's not ever during the week. I haven't seen that. We're not making critical plays," McCarthy said.
McCarthy is only guaranteed seven more games to try and fix the Cowboys with him and his entire staff in the final year of their current contracts, operating as lame ducks. Two NFL teams have already fired their head coaches in season this year: the New York Jets when they gave Robert Saleh the boot and the New Orleans Saints when they showed Dennis Allen the door. Things got worse in New York, but New Orleans is 2-0 under interim head coach Darren Rizzi. Dallas owner and general manager Jerry Jones remained steadfast postgame that he won't fire McCarthy during the season.
"I've made a change early and on a coach with Chan Gailey [when he went 18-14 in 1998 and 1999 combined], and I've always regretted that. I've made a change during the season [firing Wade Phillips in 2010 after he went 1-7], and I've regretted that," Jones said postgame. "That's the music I'm listening to."
When asked if McCarthy has lost the locker room, Jones called that nonsense despite their six-game home losing streak to begin a season standing as longest since 1989, the first year of Jones' ownership when Dallas went 1-15. That's when he took a call from late Raiders Hall of Fame head coach John Madden and late Raiders owner Al Davis.
"Well, that's nonsense, lost the locker room," Jones said when asked if McCarthy has lost the locker room. "I remember John Madden and Al Davis called me after we won one game the very first year, and he said 'well, at least you didn't lose the team or the locker room.' I said 'well, what's that? How do you lose a team? You misplace them on the road or what?' I'm not trying to be cute here, but they said 'well, you didn't lose it.' I can tell you right now with the kind of careers a bunch of those guys have, the kind of prospects of their futures, the kind of competitors they are, I don't worry one ounce about losing anything as far as in the family of losing a team. Now, can they be a part of a team that doesn't execute and doesn't win that would be disappointing them and our fans and everybody else? Yes. Yes. That can happen, but that doesn't mean they don't go out, execute and be ready to go."
Cowboys All-Pro wide receiver CeeDee Lamb backed up Jones' assessment about the locker room still fighting for McCarthy minutes later.
"We got to go out there and play hard, bro," Lamb said postgame. "We got to play for the guys that's lining up next to us, to our left and our right and then just put them before yourself. You know what I'm saying? It's not so much selfishness, it's about being selfless, and I feel like at that moment that's when we'll play better, we'll gel together and everything will take care of itself. You can't be selfish in a time like this. Everybody's, hurt, everybody's feeling bad about it."
Lamb himself is playing at far less than 100% with shoulder and back injuries the past two weeks, but he pushed through both ailments to play in Week 10 versus the Eagles and Week 11 against the Texans.
"Everybody on my team knows I'm going through situations as far as for my body. But does that stop me from going out there and playing my heart out for these guys? No, absolutely not," Lamb said. "So with that man, I take pride in what I do. I take pride in my game, and I take pride in playing for the fans and everything in between. So with that man, every week, I'm not coming out here playing to lose."
"You don't need to worry about anybody in that locker room giving everything they've got and more and how bad they feel when they get beat on a play or get beat in a quarter or the whole game, at all," Jones said. "I don't ever worry about that."
All that support aside, McCarthy knows he needs to get his Cowboys to lock in and start winning football games soon because if not, he and his staff will be unemployed following Jones letting their contracts lapse.
"This is it, man. We got seven losses. We've got to go. Backs against the wall. We got to fight, scratch and claw. We've got to do everything we can to go win the next game," McCarthy said. "That's where my mind's at. That's what I'm going to coach and that's the expectation. We've got to win. We deserve to win. You know, we deserve the opportunity to win. And that's about putting the best people out there. So right now we're young. So, those guys, our young guys, they're getting a lot of experience. We need to do whatever the hell we need to do to win."
Dallas will hit the road in Week 12 and head to Washington to face the 7-4 Commanders and McCarthy's former defensive coordinator of the prior three seasons in Dan Quinn. He has his Commanders inside the NFC playoff picture as the conference's No. 7 seed through 11 weeks, so the Cowboys will be very much challenged in their quest to end their five-game losing streak come Sunday afternoon.
