After a promising first half of football, the Dallas Cowboys once again blew the game away to the 49ers last week coming out of the break.
As I started to look into the failure to even pick up a first down in the third quarter, I found some team rankings that is costing this team football games through the first seven games of the season.
According to team rankings, the Dallas Cowboys are SECOND to last in all of football in 3rd quarter points/game. The only team they are above is a team that has not won a game since they beat the breaks off of Dallas, the Saints.
What Is Going On?
The Cowboys are averaging 2.7 points a game in 2024 in the third quarter, and in their last three they are putting up an impressive ONE point a game. Last season they averaged nearly five a game.
A huge drop-off from the highest scoring offense in football a season ago.
It started with the game against the Saints. They did trail at halftime, but it was 28-19, so they had plenty of chances to make it a one-score game when they returned from the break, and only scored three points. That led to them getting blown out 44-19.
The game against the Ravens was a beat down early. The garbage time made it close, but if they had scored one single point in the 3rd, it would have been tied.
It even showed up in their win against the Steelers. It was a 6-3 game at half, and they trailed 10-6 after the third, because guess what, they scored zero points in that frame again.
They needed a game-winning drive with no time left to pull that game out. If they had scored some points in the third quarter, that wouldn’t have been close.
We clearly saw what happened last week against the 49ers.
The 49ers came out of the locker room and simply dominated the Cowboys, scoring 21 unanswered points in the third quarter. Dallas was able to mount a rally in the fourth frame because they scored zero again.
Stuck In The Mud
This Mike McCarthy offense is stuck in the mud, they don’t do anything well outside CeeDee Lamb.
They haven’t had one single rush over 13 yards this season, the only team in football. The offensive line can’t hold a block for more than two seconds, and Dak is just throwing the ball up for grabs because they have no chance.
He has to be better, but this offense is so vanilla that after halftime nothing works until teams drop back into garbage time.
The Cowboys take on the Falcons this week, and the season rides on this game. They lose and fall to two games under .500. It is a wrap.
Jerry Jones continues to feed us all the same stuff about how he knows the right guys are on the roster, blah, blah and blah.
Every team in the league that wants to win now is getting better via the trade, and the Cowboys are not doing a dang thing.
This team is going to get ran all over against Atlanta, and after it is over, if Jerry lets Mike McCarthy continue to be the head coach and call the plays, they might not win six games.
I thought maybe some of this could be fixable, but we have seen it every single week now. The only way to make this better is to trade for someone on the offensive side of the ball that will help CeeDee Lamb.
I would also love a defensive tackle that could stop the run, but not scoring points in the third is costing this team football games. The defense will get some guys back, but this is bad football.