Dallas City News

The last time the Cowboys played a meaningful game in AT&T Stadium, they got blown out. Despite being favorites against the Packers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, the Dallas defense was unable to get a stop all day long, and the offense wasn’t able to keep up with their opponent.

The deja vu set in pretty quickly on Sunday in the Cowboys’ home opener. It wasn’t against the Packers, but the Saints came marching in as underdogs in this one and utterly dominated the Cowboys from the start. New Orleans started with the ball and promptly drove down the field, helped out by a huge shot play to Chris Olave that led to an easy touchdown run.

Then the Cowboys offense took the field, and they began to march down the field too. However, a holding penalty on rookie Tyler Guyton stalled the drive out, and Dallas had to settle for a field goal from Brandon Aubrey.

The Cowboys offense would take the field again quickly, because New Orleans scored in one play on their next drive: a 70-yard bomb to Rashid Shaheed. Once again, the Cowboys moved down the field with haste, and they once again were forced to settle for a field goal following a third down sack.

The Saints followed that up with another big scoring play. After a few quick gainers, Derek Carr hit Alvin Kamara on a screen play that broke for a 57-yard touchdown. The quick score made it clear that Mike Zimmer’s defense did not come to play this week, and they had no answers for this Saints offense as they staked out an early 21-6 lead.

The Cowboys finally scored a touchdown following that, thanks to a heads-up (or, rather, heads down) play from CeeDee Lamb to evade two defenders and turn on the jets. It proved to be one of the few positives for the Cowboys on the day.

For a moment – a very brief moment – it looked like the Cowboys might be showing signs of life. The touchdown from Lamb cut it down to a one-score game, and the defense responded by very quickly bringing up a third down, a rarity for them in this one. But New Orleans moved the chains and then promptly walked down the field the rest of the way, scoring another touchdown.

For many, this was the point where the game began to feel over for the Cowboys, but there may have still been a few who held onto some hope. Well, the Saints extinguished that hope pretty quickly. When Jalen Brooks fell down as Dak Prescott threw a pass to him on the next drive, the Saints picked it off and fielded a decent return. That set their own offense up in scoring position, and it only took three plays to score yet another touchdown and go up 35-13. The Cowboys would get a field goal right before halftime, but this game was over.

That would prove to be the story of this game: the Cowboys defense was completely and totally incapable of showing any resistance against this Saints offense.

Offensively, the Cowboys had some good drives, amassing 353 total yards of offense and averaging 5.3 yards per play, both being marked improvements from last week. But they struggled to finish drives early on against a very talented defense and, as the game went on and the Saints kept scoring, the pressure mounted on the offense to create explosive plays, something the Saints just don’t give up often.

Defensively, this was a nightmare. The Saints scored touchdowns on their first six drives and only faced six third downs on those six drives, converting each one of them. The Cowboys didn’t force a stop until the fourth quarter, and it came because Chris Olave tipped an inaccurate pass into the hands of Donovan Wilson. Dallas didn’t force a punt until nearly halfway through the fourth quarter.

Simply put, the defense couldn’t stop a fly, and the offense was unable to compete in a no-holds-barred shootout against a Saints defense that actually showed up to play. This one got out of hand early, handing the Cowboys their first loss of the season and dropping them to 1-1 ahead of their clash next week against Lamar Jackson and the run-heavy Ravens. Dallas will have plenty of questions to answer between now and then.