Tonight’s final dress rehearsal won’t tell us much about Dallas

by Aug 22, 2025

The Dallas Cowboys will take the field tonight at AT&T Stadium for the final preseason game of the year. Most of the projected starters will be watching from the sidelines.

Micah Parsons will be watching, as well as the rest of us, waiting and watching, while hoping Jerry Jones comes to his senses this weekend and pays the man.

Yeah, I laughed for a good two minutes too after I wrote the sentence above.

Joe Milton will get the start again. It will be interesting to see how quickly Will Grier is brought in to replace him.

The Milton experiment was always going to be long term, with the Cowboys hoping 2016 wouldn’t repeat itself.

That year, the rookie Dak Prescott was supposed to be a 2–3-year understudy to Tony Romo.

Dak Prescott, Tony Romo

We all know how that went.

Milton has a lot to clean up before he can be a starter in the Cowboys, much less anywhere in the NFL. Hopefully Prescott stays healthy enough over the next two seasons to give Milton that time.

A few roster spots may be decided tonight. That’s pretty much the only reason to watch.

  • Who: Atlanta Falcons
  • Where: at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX
  • When: Tonight, 7:00 p.m. (CDT)
  • How (to watch): NFL Network

It would probably give Dallas a boost to close out what has been an otherwise disappointing preseason by beating the Falcons tonight.

After last year’s ugly 7-10 season, an 0-3 preseason this fall wouldn’t exactly inspire confidence about this year being any better.

All-Time Marks

The last time the Cowboys faced the Falcons in the preseason dates all the way back to the 2002 season. In the fourth week of a then five-week preseason slate, the Falcons won 21-19.

That game was played at Texas Stadium.

Two years before, also at Texas Stadium, the Falcons won 20-9 in the second week of preseason.

The last time Dallas has beaten Atlanta in a preseason game, you ask? Week 4 of the 1991 preseason.

The Cowboys escaped with a 20-17 win at Texas Stadium that year.

Did Dallas lose more than a game on Monday night? 1

Dallas is slightly better when it comes to regular-season games against the Falcons, holding a 19-12 overall edge.

The last time the two teams met was last year in Atlanta in what turned out to be Prescott’s last game of the year. Dallas lost that game 27-21.

The last meeting between the franchises at AT&T Stadium came in the 2021 season. The Cowboys won that game handily, 43-3.

The Prediction

Dallas just needs to get out of this contest healthy and then start making the final decisions on roster cuts. The way the team has been playing though?

This is probably going to be an Atlanta win and the Cowboys first winless preseason since 2021.

Dallas was 0-4 that year.

They still managed to go 12-5 to win the NFC East. They then lost at home to San Francisco in the wild card game.

Richard Paolinelli

Richard Paolinelli

Richard Paolinelli is a sports journalist and author. In addition to his work at InsideTheStar.com, he has a Substack -- Dispatches From A SciFi Scribe – where he discusses numerous topics, including sports in general. He started his newspaper career in 1991 with the Gallup (NM) Independent before going to the Modesto (CA) Bee, Gustine (CA) Press-Standard, and Turlock (CA) Journal -- where he won the 2001 Best Sports Story, in the annual California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Better Newspapers Contest. He then moved to the Merced (CA) Sun-Star, Tracy (CA) Press, Patch and finished his career in 2011 with the San Francisco (CA) Examiner. He has written two Non-Fiction sports books, 11 novels, and has over 30 published short stories.

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