Micah Parsons, Dak Prescott, as well as Mike McCarthy are each trying to figure out ways to play better in the road for the Cowboys.
If you want to call two NFL teams “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” the 10-4 Dallas Cowboys are the best choice in 2023.
They are 7-0 at AT&T Stadium and have additionally won 14 straight games at home, which is the longest current streak in the league and goes back to last season.
But on the other hand, they fell to 3-4 on the road on Sunday after losing 31–10 to the Bills in Buffalo to Week 15. It would be too mild to say that they didn’t play well.
“We did not play well,” coach Mike McCarthy told The Athletic after the game. “Our road play is just too bad.””We have to be far more efficient on the road.”
The Bills had 351 yards compared to Dallas’ 195, a difference of 156 yards. The Bills got most of their yards on the ground, with 266 yards rushing.
For the first time since 2021, Sunday was the first time that the team’s defensive coordinator Dan Quinn had let the Cowboys’ offense gain more than 250 yards on the ground.
Against the Cowboys defense, Bills running back James Cook looked such as a Hall of Famer.
The Cowboys defense was one of the best in the league in terms of scoring defense going into Week 15. He ran for 25 yards and scored a 24-yard touchdown, which was the most in his career.
In other words, that’s 7.2 yards per run. In addition, Cook caught two passes for 42 yards and scored a touchdown from 18 yards out in the subsequent quarter. The faceplant on Sunday is one of many this season that the Cowboys have done.
That game was the first time since Hall of Fame back Thurman Thomas did it in 1991 that a Bills player had 200 or more scrimmage yards, a minimum of three rushing touchdowns, and one or more catching touchdowns. Cook had 221.
They have the best scoring attack in the NFL at home, scoring 39.9 points per game, having the ball for 35:11 minutes, having a 53.6% third-down conversion rate, and having the most points (+171). All of their scores in those same groups are much worse when they’re on the road.
Dallas’ worst loss was on Sunday. Now, they need to hope that the 10-3 Philadelphia Eagles lose two of their last four games, starting with “Monday Night Football” towards the Seattle Seahawks, so they can win the NFC East and make sure they get to play in the playoffs at home.
It’s not likely that will happen because the Eagles’ last four opponents—the Seahawks, the New York Giants (twice), or the Arizona Cardinals—have a total winning percentage of.345. This makes their remaining games the third-easiest of the whole season.
More than anything else, that makes the Cowboys feel like they need to find a way to play more like they do at home. “So, it is unimportant unless that we get better on the road.”
Cowboys All-Pro side rusher Micah Parsons told The Dallas Morning News after the game, “We’ve got to keep getting better on the road, as well as we’ve got to prove ourselves as road warriors every game in the playoffs currently because of this.”
The only good thing about the Cowboys’ road problems is that that they have an instant chance to try again and win on their own against a team that is still in the running for the playoffs.
In Week 16, they play the 10–4 Miami Dolphins, who are one of each of the top teams in the AFC. The playoff-bound Cowboys are still finding out who they’ll face this season, so that game will be a big test for them.
The Dallas Cowboys locked up a playoff spot a little over thirty minutes before their game toward the Buffalo Bills in the NFL playoffs on Sunday. After about three hours, that didn’t matter as much to them anymore.
After losing 31–10 to the Bills, the Cowboys fell to 10–4. To get to Super Bowl LVIII, they might need to win all three playoff matches on the road, assuming that the Philadelphia Eagles as well as San Francisco 49ers both lose in the last few weeks.
“That didn’t bother me. “To be honest, I don’t care” when asked about making the playoffs, QB Dak Prescott said.
“That was one of the goals when we started this thing that the beginning for the year, but by the end of the season, that we knew it was only a matter of time.”
“We can cross that off the list, but we need to get to other things first.” There have been many times when I’ve told you that it’s about us giving our best performance every week, and tonight we just didn’t do that.
This is more important than making the playoffs right now. This is what we’re worried about.
They can still win the NFC East, but the Eagles (10-3) have to lose two of their last four games and not lose one of their own. The Eagles play the Seahawks on Monday (8:15 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN).