The historical ineptitude of the Cowboys defense in stunning loss to Saints
The Dallas Cowboys never stood a chance on Sunday. Offensively the New Orleans Saints arrived to AT&T Stadium ready to execute a perfectly drawn-up gameplan. Needless to say, they executed and Klint Kubiak got the better of Mike Zimmer and his Cowboys defense.
Shockingly the Saints scored touchdowns on each of their first six possessions of the game. You are not reading that improperly. These were the first six possessions for New Orleans:
- Touchdown
- Touchdown
- Touchdown
- Touchdown
- Touchdown
- Touchdown
That feels impossible. Things should not be this easy against an NFL defense. We have wondered what this Zimmer defense could or would look like, especially against someone who learned from the tree of Kyle Shanahan, and Sunday brought with it early returns that will leave us wondering even more for much longer.
But the loss and performance were not just obviously bad, they were historically awful.
Consider that Dallas allowed 432 total yards of offense and 44 points. This literally did not happen once throughout the Dan Quinn era, who got his first win as a head coach on Sunday, as the last instance was back in 2020 against the Cleveland Browns.
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Prior to that instance was the infamous Monday night contest in Chicago back in 2013. Needless to say the Cowboys defense does not get worked this badly all too often.
But the performance wasn’t some repetitive onslaught of long drive after long drive from New Orleans. The Saints had an enormous amount of explosive plays where they took advantage of Dallas’ aggression and poor tackling.
Consider that Saints quarterback Derek Carr threw for 243 yards… on 11 completions. A quarterback with such a high level of yardage output on so few completions is something that has only happened a handful of times this century.
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Think about this long and hard. 243 yards! On only 11 completions! That is impossible yet here we are.
It was an astoundingly poor performance from the Dallas defense that is going to leave an ugly taste in their mouths. The Baltimore Ravens are up next for them and are now officially bringing an 0-2 record to town in hopes to avoid an 0-3 start to the season.
No pressure.