The Dallas Cowboys are 1-2 for the third straight season, and the line coming out of the locker room in Rio de Janeiro is "This one hurts." Fair. Also the wrong thing to be upset about.
Dallas won one of its first three games in 2025 and finished 7-9-1. It won one of its first three in 2024 and finished 7-10. So the 1-2 is real, the pattern is real, and the reflex is to file this as another slow-motion version of the same lost season. The Baltimore box score doesn't support that as cleanly as the record does.
Start with Derrick Henry: 26 carries, 89 yards, 3.4 per attempt. He scored twice, and 3.4 is still a bad afternoon for him. Dallas didn't get run over in a game that came down to a field goal. It got sliced. Lamar Jackson threw 20 passes. He completed 15 for 186 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, a 9.3 average and a 136.7 rating. Zay Flowers caught five for 84. Rashod Bateman caught two for 37. The Ravens didn't need volume because nearly every completion was worth something, and both Baltimore passing scores went to players Dallas had no answer for in the middle of the field.
That's a coverage and assignment problem. It's not a talent gap, and it's the most fixable item on the list, which is where I'll part with the crowd.
The rest of the crowd's case is the head coach. Brian Schottenheimer landed in the "warm" tier of an early hot-seat check after the 0-1 start, per the Dallas Sports Journal. Warm in September is a thermostat reading, not a verdict, but it tells you how little patience exists for a fourth straight year of this.
Dak Prescott, asked about fans who think this season will look like the last two, said, "Sorry for them." That's a cornered answer. I'd rather hear defiance than agreement.
Here's my call: three straight 1-2 starts is a record, not a diagnosis. The Cowboys' problem in this one was specific, and it lives in the second level of the defense, not the line of scrimmage. If Baltimore can throw for 9.3 a pop on 20 attempts, that's on the back end. Fix it in the next month and the "here we go again" column gets written about somebody else. Don't, and Schottenheimer's seat stops being warm.
