Decoding McCarthy, Wk 15 - All Hat, No Cattle

Another showdown game away from home, another day the offense does not deliver.

Sunday was frustrating and I definitely don’t need to tell you that. The blame game can be played all day, but here at #SturmStack, we are not worried about making sure one party gets it to absolve another.

We have special days for each side of the ball and we can definitely handle looking at each side independently.

So, yes, you can expect that we will be giving the Defense a “F-minus” tomorrow. But, in no way, should that mean we aren’t giving the Offense a “F-minus” today.

In fact, the similarities to the game in San Francisco in Week 5 are tough to shake. This game was billed as one that should require 4 quarters and 60 minutes of bruising warfare, but the truth is that Dallas did not even get to halftime in a massive, road showdown game. Again.

The Dallas Cowboys have played 38 games in their franchise history in which they have scored 10 points or fewer AND tallied 200 yards of offense or less. Both of those benchmarks are comically low and it is the equivalent of blaming your pitching staff for a loss when you only had two baserunners.

In other words, the defense was horrendous, but they could have played their best game and we wonder if the Cowboys offense was ever going to score the 24 to 28 points that we expected them to need to win.

To put it in perspective, of those 38 games, Stathead tells us that the franchise now has a record of 1-37 on those occasions, with their last win coming 53 years ago. Apparently, they managed to beat Cleveland – on the road, no less – in December of 1970, by the score of 6-2. You will be pleased to know that Dallas was a 2.5-point favorite that day, so they did cover the spread. If anyone has a watchable copy of that game, perhaps we can review it on a rainy day in the offseason.

So, yes, my lasting memory of this debacle in Buffalo will probably be the silly effort from the Cowboys run defense, but this offense has played two games this badly in 2023 and you will not be pleased to know that they were the two games where America decided that it is “the same Ol’ Cowboys” once again.

And, who can blame them? After all those lessons learned and all those modifications to the offense over the last 2 months, I am sad to report that they had a chance to retake the test and they got the exact same score.