Mistakes Keep Killing the Cowboys
Green Bay wins 23-13 at Lambeau: two Prescott interceptions, a scoreless first half, and a 2-4 hole no Dallas team has ever climbed out of.
Packers 23, Cowboys 13: Sunday Night Football at Lambeau.
THE MOMENT
Dallas finally had something. Dee Winters had just intercepted Jordan Love (the Cowboys' first interception of the entire season), and the offense was standing at the Green Bay 3-yard line, three yards from a lead, from a pulse, from a Sunday night that felt different.
Dak Prescott threw it to Evan Williams. The Packers safety, not a Cowboy. Green Bay drove 73 yards the other way and kicked a field goal, and if you have watched this team lately, you knew the night was already written. Prescott threw another interception before halftime (CeeDee Lamb fell down on the route; the rookie Brandon Cisse did not), and the Packers cashed that one in for a touchdown too. 17-0 at the half. Both of Dallas' giveaways became Green Bay points. Final: Packers 23, Cowboys 13, and the score was the kindest thing anybody said about Dallas all night.
THE FREEZE
This is not a slump. A slump ends. This is a habit.
THE HUMAN
Prescott threw 54 passes Sunday night. Fifty-four. They gained 4.8 yards apiece, a franchise quarterback reduced to checking down against a defense that was missing its best player. Because that is the other story standing on the other sideline, in street clothes: Micah Parsons, still on the physically unable to perform list, still healing from the torn ACL and meniscus, watching the team that traded him get held to 13 points, while Kenny Clark, the man who came back to Dallas in that very trade, recorded one of the Cowboys' three sacks. There is a trade so tangled that both teams can point at Sunday night and feel robbed. Green Bay won the game. Nobody won the trade.
Dallas ran for 48 yards. Lamb caught nine balls on eighteen targets, a man being asked to carry an offense by himself. The Cowboys have now allowed 20 or more points in 13 straight games, a franchise record, the kind you do not hang in a hallway.
THE SACRIFICE
What is left to give? That is a real question now, and it is the one this franchise keeps avoiding. This was Dallas' first game after a defensive players-only meeting. The offense got shut out in a first half for the first time since 2021 anyway, and the defense, meeting or not, still could not get off the field: Green Bay converted 11 of 17 third downs. The effort, the coach insists, is right. The fight, he insists, is right. But effort is the ante, not the winnings. Every team in this league fights. The Cowboys keep paying full price for games and bringing home the receipt.
There is one mercy in the wreckage, and a fan takes mercy where he finds it: Philadelphia and the Giants both lost Sunday too, both playing backup quarterbacks. The division did not run away while Dallas stumbled. But mercy has an expiration date, and its name is next Monday night: Dallas, at Philadelphia, in primetime, again.
THE RECEIPT
- Scoreless first half
- 13 straight games allowing 20+
- Next: @ PHI, MNF
SCOREBOARD
Plainly: Green Bay scored on its opening possession, 14 plays and 90 yards, Love to Matthew Golden. Dallas' only real push came in the third quarter (Javonte Williams' 1-yard touchdown after Prescott kept the drive alive on fourth-and-2 to Lamb), and Green Bay answered every push with a Trey Smack field goal, three of them on the night. Dallas' last stand died on downs inside the Green Bay 15, five minutes burned for nothing; Ryan Flournoy's touchdown with 44 seconds left changed the score, not the story. Prescott: 34 of 54, 258 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions. Love: 23 of 41, 276 yards, a touchdown passing and another on a sneak. Green Bay has now won three straight and stands 4-2; in its last ten meetings with Dallas, it is 8-1-1.
NOTE 1
And the ledger nobody in Dallas wants read aloud: the Cowboys are 2-4, losers of two straight, and in the Super Bowl era no Cowboys team that started 2-4 has ever made the playoffs. They are also 1-7-1 in primetime since the start of 2025, the worst mark in the league, under the brightest lights, again and again.
THE VOICES
The effort is right. The fight is right. Mistakes are killing us.
Brian Schottenheimer said it as plainly as it can be said, and a man should be allowed his own words on a night like this: "The effort is right. The fight is right. Mistakes are killing us."
He is right, and that is the problem. He has been right for weeks. At some point a diagnosis stops being an explanation and becomes a description of the coach, of the quarterback, of the whole star on the helmet. Green Bay's side offered no quote worth printing tonight, because winners on cruise control rarely do. The Packers did not beat Dallas with brilliance. They beat Dallas with patience, and let Dallas do the rest.
THE TAKE
FINAL VERDICTI have been down on this team in public, on camera, and I am a fan. I get to be. But strip the fandom off and the reporting says the same thing: the Cowboys are not losing to better rosters. They are losing the same game every week: turnovers turned into points, third downs they cannot end, a quarterback throwing 54 times because nothing else on the truck works. That is not bad luck. Bad luck does not keep appointments.
The season is not over at 2-4. Arithmetic still allows a run, and the division is limping alongside them. But teams do not climb out of holes with meetings. They climb out with the boring, unglamorous, un-televised work of doing the simple things right when nobody is watching, the work this column exists to honor, and the work Dallas has not yet shown it is willing to do.
What did your worst habit ask of you? Dallas keeps answering: one more Sunday.
The star deserves better math than that.
Andre D. Williams
More than the final score. DRE'S TAKE: the story behind the performance.
Credits: Score and scoring flow verified via Packers.com, Reuters, NBC Sports, and the Sportradar box score; Schottenheimer's quote as reported by Todd Archer of ESPN (via ClutchPoints); Parsons' status via NFL reporting (Tom Pelissero) and Packers injury coverage. No verbatim Packers postgame quote could be verified on deadline; none was used.
Share
Related stories
See all →
The DRE'S TAKE Newsletter
More than the final score.
Get the stories, interviews, and perspectives behind the performance.