The Cowboys got the win they so desperately needed, but the same old problems remain

Ralph Vacchiano

NFL reporter

There were signs of relief in the visitors’ locker room at the Meadowlands on Thursday evening, which were certainly noticeable in Texas. The Dallas Cowboys did what they so desperately needed to do. They won a game and prevented their season from becoming a disaster.

But as big as the victory was for the exhausted team, it wasn’t big enough to erase all of the obvious problems. The Cowboys defeated a poor New York Giants team 20-15 on a night where neither team generated much offense. The same known issues remained and some new ones emerged.

The win was definitely “huge, especially when you compare it to the alternative,” as quarterback Dak Prescott said.

But …

“We feel great about what we accomplished,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said. “But I think it’s the fourth week in a row that we realize we still have a lot of work to do.”

Yes, they do, because the goal isn’t narrowly avoiding disaster against a Giants team they’ve beaten eight straight times – and one they beat twice last year by a combined score of 89-17 . Your goals are much higher. You consider yourself a Super Bowl contender.

They just still don’t look like one.

“It’s a process,” Prescott emphasized. “We will not become complacent. We won’t be overly happy about what we did tonight. It’s about building and figuring out what we can do better at all stages.”

“But with a win it’s a lot easier.”

Fair point. Importantly, the mood in the Cowboys’ locker room was good after two straight ugly home losses. It’s important that they don’t spend the next 10 days until their next game in Pittsburgh stewing over a loss while Jerry Jones stands on the deck of a sinking ship shouting “Everything’s OK.” Had they lost, the “alternative” Prescott was talking about would be ten days of outside panic, a million questions about what went wrong in a season on the brink, and a full-blown fire under McCarthy’s already hot seat.

They avoided all that and at least temporarily changed the narrative of their season and the feeling in a locker room that seemed to be falling apart at the seams last week.

“It’s more fun here,” said receiver CeeDee Lamb. “When you lose two games in a row, you get into a phase where everyone is nervous. You’re ready to play again and get it over with. It’s good for us to go 1-0 this week. This is the right thing we needed.”

They desperately needed a win – any win. But all that matters is whether they are truly capable of fixing their problems.

Did the Cowboys impress with their win over the Giants?

And that’s a lot.

For example:

• They still can’t run the ball. There were some signs of life in the running game in the second half, with some big runs from Rico Dowdle. But he still only managed 46 yards on 11 carries and the Cowboys still only had 80 total rushing yards. And Ezekiel Elliott was barely there Thursday night, rushing five times for 19 yards.
• They are incredibly undisciplined. The Cowboys had 11 penalties for 89 yards — and that doesn’t include a 15-yard facemask penalty that was inexcusably called on Giants tight end Daniel Bellinger, the man whose facemask was pulled. They concede an average of eight penalties per game, making them the fifth-most penalty team in the league.
• The passing game seems out of sync. Thanks to a 55-yard touchdown catch, Lamb finally had a small breakthrough. However, his other six catches only went for 43 yards. And Prescott, who was an MVP candidate last year with a league-best 36 touchdown passes, is in game manager territory. He completed 22 of 27 passes for just 221 yards against a poor secondary that was missing two of its best cornerbacks. He is on pace for just 24 touchdown passes this year.
• The run defense was better, but the pass defense was not. The good news is that they held the Giants to just 26 rushing yards. The bad news is that Daniel Jones picked them apart for 281 yards. Their pass rush, as it has been all season, was virtually non-existent. And the Giants held the ball for more than 35 minutes. Dallas couldn’t get them off the field.

Now the injuries are piling up. Micah Parsons left the game in pain, believed to be a sprained ankle, and underwent an MRI on Monday morning. DeMarcus Lawrence injured his foot despite promising to be “back soon.” Even linebacker DeMarvion Overshown briefly left the game with an undisclosed injury. That’s three big blows for a defense already playing without cornerbacks DaRon Bland and Caelen Carson.

All of these things are concerning and need to be addressed quickly because the Giants (1-3) have been a pushover compared to what comes next. In their next three games (over four weeks), the Cowboys (2-2) play the Steelers (3-0), Lions (2-1) and 49ers (1-2) – and only the game against the Lions is left home. And the Eagles (2:1) and Texans (2:1) are also on the program before Thanksgiving.

The Giants may not have been able to take advantage of the Cowboys’ struggles, but it’s a good bet the other teams will.

That’s a problem, even if to her it felt like a problem for another day. The most important thing about Thursday night was that they felt good for the first time in three weeks. And they had hope that that would be enough to lead to better things.

“I played on a lot of different teams, and some of them just got hot when you got going,” Prescott said. “That’s what we want to do. That’s what this league is about, about getting hot at the right moment – about building up. It’s about the process – trusting the process no matter what the results are.”

The trial brought a victory, but it was only a Band-Aid on their larger problems. The next step in the process must be to actually address their problems – and not deny that they are still there. Otherwise, this would just be a temporary reprieve for the Cowboys, and they would soon feel bad again.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the last six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that he spent 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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