If you can’t believe the disaster that you just saw, you aren’t alone. The Dallas Cowboys, who came into Week 5 as a massive favorite over a bruised and battered Tampa Bay Buccaneers team, were embarrassed en route to a 24-16 loss.
It is truly one of the worst losses the organization has seen in the past few years; as Al Michaels put it earlier tonight, this was a “can’t lose” game for Dallas.
Instead of taking an easy win over a bad team to advance to 3-2, they lost at home to fall to 2-3, with the hardest portion of their schedule still ahead of them. This feels like a loss that proves this team, this year, is not capable of winning anything of substance.
If you can stomach it, I’ll recap this atrocious performance here, going through both the first and second halves that led to this nightmare outcome.
1st Half: The Initial Disappointment in All Phases of the Game
(7-0 Cowboys after 1, 10-7 Cowboys at Halftime)
The Cowboys offense managed to open this game up strong, delivering a nine-play, 70-yard touchdown drive that would become their only seven-point score until the fourth quarter.
I’ll get back to the recap in a minute, but first let me say this: if you told me that after the first drive, I probably would believe you, because this team is comically bad at times, but I’d definitely have been at least a little surprised.
Alas.
What followed that drive was the beginning of the nightmare on defense. The Bucs cooked up a 15-play, 73-yard, 10:58-second drive for a touchdown. No, that’s not a typo — the Cowboys got slowly walked down for eleven minutes.
To fast-forward for you, the Dallas offense did not regain a smidge of momentum after that; they punted on their next three consecutive drives, before finally kicking a field goal after a drive-ending Jake Ferguson drop. That gave the Cowboys their final lead of the game at 10-7.
Their inability to score was salvaged, at least temporarily, by the defense forcing three consecutive punts on the Bucs offense, though emphasis is strongly on the word “temporarily” there.
Dallas took that lead into the half, where the Buccaneers got the ball to start the third quarter.
2nd Half: The Third and Fourth Quarters from Hell
(24-10 Bucs after 3rd Quarter, 24-16 Bucs after 4th Quarter)
I guess the only place to begin is with the 2-play, 86-yard, 1-minute touchdown drive that started one of the most disastrous third quarters I’ve seen as a football fan.
Bucky Irving started the half off with a 72-yard gain, before Emeka Egbuka practically walked in past Caleb Downs on a 14-yard jet sweep. It was as easy for Tampa as it appears written in front of you right now.
Then it was time for the “greatest offense there is” to respond. How did they, you might ask? Well, it started off fine, before Ryan Flournoy had a ball hit his hands on a critical 3rd down and ended up landing in the hands of the defense for a tipped interception.
This is where the train went off the tracks, folks.
Tampa then scored another touchdown on just five plays, and KaVontae Turpin responded with the first kickoff return fumble of his career. Chase McLaughlin nailed a field goal in response to that, and the Cowboys came back and turned the ball over on downs a couple of minutes later.
A whopping 12 plays later, Dallas actually got the ball back on a goal-line stand that nearly put the game out of reach — this is where the classic Cowboys drag-you-back-into-it moment came through.
Dak Prescott exploded for a vintage 10-play, 99-yard touchdown drive that put Dallas back into contention; George Pickens was the one who came through with a ridiculous touchdown catch. Ultimately, they decided to go for two and were unsuccessful, with the ball being tipped out of the end zone.
So, Tampa Bay had a chance to kick a FG and make it a three-possession game, but went for it on 4th down and failed.
Now it’s a one-score game.
Even with that, they had cut the lead to one score, and the defense was going to get a chance for redemption with five minutes to play; they got the stop, yes, but DaRon Bland got one last opportunity to totally screw the Cowboys, and boy, he didn’t miss it.
The former All-Pro, who has had a truly terrible 2026, dropped a walk-in pick-six that would have, at least, brought the lead down to two.
I’m going to move on, because if I have to think about Bland much more tonight, my head might just explode.
Offensively, this was the Cowboys’ chance to even things up with an 8-point drive. Did they come through? It sure looked like they might, until Ferguson came through for one last disastrous moment, as the ball clanked off of him and into the hands of Tampa for a game-ending turnover.
The Cowboys move to 2-3, with a matchup in Green Bay in Week 6.
Where does Dallas go from here? Nowhere fast — that’s for damn sure.
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