Cowboys looking to ground Jets, losing streak in second week

As we continue to look at the Dallas Cowboys all-time record against their 14 opponents in the 2023 season we bring on the J-E-T-S.

Dallas closes out their back-to-back New York series in Week 2 when they host the Jets in their season home opener on September 17th.

It will be the 13th meeting between the two teams since 1971, all in the regular season.

Dallas holds an overall record of 7-5 against the Jets and a 322-194 scoring advantage. The Cowboys won the first four meetings (1971, 1975, 1978, 1987) and seven of the first nine.

But the Jets have won the last three games between the two team by a combined total of eight points.

Dallas is only 2-2 against the Jets at home, and they lost to the Jets — 19-16 — in the only game they’ve played at AT&T Stadium.

While the Cowboys are 5-3 on the road against the Jets, they haven’t beaten them at MetLife Stadium in two tries.

The First Meeting

The first time the Cowboys and Jets met on the football field came at Texas Stadium on December 4, 1971.

The stadium was still so brand new that the interior walls were painted gray, not the blue with the white stars that we all grew up knowing.

Joe Namath had only recently returned from a serious knee injury the week before in a 24-21 loss to the 49ers at Shea Stadium in New York.

He wouldn’t make it past the first quarter against the Cowboys.

Ike Thomas returned the opening kickoff 101 yards for a touchdown, Roger Staubach threw a pair of 27-yard touchdown passes to Calvin Hill and Duane Thomas made it 28-0 on a three yard run before the quarter was close to being over.

Namath, who had gone 1-for-5 for 20 yards with an interception, was pulled from the game by Jets’ Head Coach Weeb Ewbank rather than risk re-injuring his knee.

Staubach finished 10-of-15 for 168 yards and three touchdowns.

The Aaron Rodgers Experience

Adding some spice to the Cowboys’ home opener this year is the Jets’ new starting quarterback, Aaron Rodgers.

The Cowboys’ nemesis comes into the game with a 6-3 regular-season record against the Cowboys during his 16-year tenure in Green Bay.

Dallas defeated Rodgers the first two times he faced them in 2007 and 2008.

Since then, aside from a 30-16 victory in 2016, led by a three-touchdown effort from Dak Prescott, Rodgers has owned the Cowboys.

In his nine regular season games against Dallas, Rodgers is 200-295 passing for 2,164 yards, 14 touchdowns and just one interception.

The Post-Season Record

As the Jets were an original AFL Franchise in 1960, and the Cowboys were an NFL expansion team in 1960, the two teams have never met in the playoffs.

The only way they will ever play in the post season is to advance to the Super Bowl in the same year.

The closest they came to meeting prior to the 1970 merger was the 1968 season when Dallas was the second-seeded team in the NFL.

The Cowboys failed to get past Cleveland in the opening round while the Jets went on to upset the Colts in Super Bowl III.

In the post-merger era the two teams have just missed meeting in the Super Bowl one time.

In 1982 both teams made it to their respective conference championship games. The Jets were shutout by Miami 14-0 and Dallas fell to the Redskins 31-17.

Rodgers is 2-0 against Dallas in the playoffs, both heartbreaking losses for the Cowboys.

In the two games, Rodgers was 52-of-78 passing for 671 yards with five touchdowns and one interception.

The 2015 loss — and yes, Dez caught the ball — at Lambeau Field by a score of 26-21 saw the Cowboys let a 21-13 third quarter lead slip away.

In 2017, the Cowboys watched as Rodgers led the Packers on a drive with just 35 seconds left to set up a game-winning field goal for a 34-31 win.