ARLINGTON, Texas – The Dallas Cowboys got blitzed.
Got blitzed right out of their own place Sunday night for 92,991 to witness at AT&T Stadium and for a national TV audience to see.
Got blitzed right out of their remote playoff contention.
Got blitzed into submission.
Bottom line, as hard as this may be to digest for a bunch having battled back from the 3-5-1 hole they dug for themselves, drawing even at 6-6-1 with four games to go and having overcome more adversity than most teams have any right to face, there was this reality to smack them right in the face at 10:30 p.m.:
They just weren’t good enough, the hardest of all pills to swallow, their second two-game losing streak of the season dropping them to 6-7-1 with three games to play.
Even the head coach in this one had to face that fact:
“At the end of the day, we did not play well enough to win,” Brian Schottenheimer had to admit.
The Cowboys knew coming into Week 15 of this 2025 season that to have even a chance of qualifying for the playoffs their most logical path would be to overtake the NFC East-leading Eagles to win the division title. But that would entail, by most common sense, winning the final four games of the season to get to 10-6-1 and hoping for Philadelphia to go 2-2 over its final four games to finish 10-7.
Naw, not now. The Eagles moved to 9-5 by blowing out the hapless Raiders earlier in the afternoon, 31-naught. And with the Cowboys unable to win one straight, they will need to win their final three games against the Chargers, Commanders and Giants while the Eagles must lose out to Wasington, Buffalo, Washinghton.
Hmmm, what you think? Like a one percent of all that taking place.
Especially not after this disheartening performance.
Giving up 34 more points after being hit for 44 in the loss to Detroit a week ago Thursday and even 28 in the three-point victory over Kansas City, which followed limiting the Raiders to 16 points and the Eagles to 21 in those two wins. My goodness, that’s 106 points in their last three games, a trend having boogered the Cowboys a majority of the season. They gave up 30 or more points five times over the first seven games and now seven times over these 14.
The offense on this night, and I’ll continue to maintain as long as I have a say it, but the more field goals you kick in a game, the closer you are to losing. Well, the Cowboys kicked four in this loss to the Vikings, as many as Minnesota scored touchdowns. Do the math, four touchdowns are worth 28 points. Four field goals get you 12. That’s a 16-point difference. The Cowboys lost by eight.
But you know what, maybe I need to add an addendum to that proclamation. The more field goals you miss, the closer you are to losing. Of all darn things, Mr. Automatic, Brandon Aubrey, missed two field goals in the same game, as many as he had missed over the first 13 games combined, going 27 of 29. This being only the third time in his amazing 48-game NFL career that he has missed two field goals in a game. And for sure Aubrey won’t accept this as an asterisk, though this time the misses were from 51 and 59 yards, pushing both with plenty of distance to the right.
The Vikings actually forced the Cowboys into seven field goal situations – the four he converted, the two he missed and the one that saw head coach Brian Schottenheimer evidently support my theory when he aborted a 48-yard attempt on the Cowboys’ very first possession when facing fourth-and-4 from the Minnesota 48-yard line in favor of having installed a fake attempt. Holder Brian Anger flipped the ball over his head to Aubrey on the run for a 6-yard gain that contributed to their opening touchdown drive for a 7-0 lead.
The reason for all this “foot” ball is this: The Cowboys only converted two of 12 third down attempts, a pitiful 16 percent. Without me even looking it up, that’s easily their lowest percentage of the season since 10 times in their first 13 games the conversion percentage was at least 40 percent, the previous low being 27.3 percent in the loss to Chicago. Worse than that, the Cowboys were only 2-for-5 scoring touchdowns in the red zone
The Vikings blitzed the daylights out of Dak Prescott, over and over again, the hallmark of Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ career. And the Cowboys knew it. Knew those blitzes were coming indiscriminately, including unpredictably on non-passing downs. Next Gen Stats has the Vikings blitzing Dak on 46.3 percent of his 40 drop backs, 38 attempts and two sacks. That’s right at 19 times, nearly half of his drop backs. Plus, Dak suffered 11 QB hits and was pressured 21 times (51.2 percent).
No wonder Dak had 15 incompletions, five of those passes defensed. That he still threw for 294 yards and the Cowboys finished with 423 yards of total offense is impressive.
And it wasn’t as if the Vikings were coming with five guys, meaning just an extra pass rusher. Oh, no. They came with six and seven, and one time there were eight. Creating even more blocking confusion were the times they showed multiple-player blitzes but then dropped off.
That was a big reason why Dak only completed 23 of 38 passes, just a 60.5 completion percentage, his lowest of the season and coming to a 19-game low stretching back to last year.
“The zero that we talked about just throughout the week, gave it to us a bunch,” Dak said of Minnesota’s all-out blitzes. “We didn’t have a good enough answer. When you don’t have a good enough answer for that, especially against Flores, you’re going to see it again and again. Yeah, that’s what happened.
“They did a great job on the back end, playing with vision. So it made it tough to get to the beaters with your normal zero beaters when they’re playing man. (Not) looking at the man, but they’re looking at the quarterback.”
There was a previous game when Flores was the head coach at Miami that he blitzed Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson 28 times. And on this night, the Vikings were bound and determined not to let Dak single-handily beat them.
After all, what the heck did the Vikings have to lose gambling on all that blitzing? They came into town with 5-8 record and knew before they even kicked off they could not catch Chicago (10-4) in the NFC North, the Packers would need just one more win to get to 10 and already the Rams, Seahawks and 49ers all had at least 10 wins for a wild-card spot.
“Yeah, it was that chess match,” Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell said. “We’re up, we’re coming, we’re not coming. (Dak’s) seen it all. He’s experienced. He’s very smart. I love watching him play, just the way he’s in total command.
“But there was some back and forth there between him and Harry (safety Harrison Smith), and kind of what we were doing, what they were doing. And, you know, all we’re trying to do is continue to apply pressure because this is an offense where if you just let them play kind of stress-free all night long, they can put up a lot of yards in a hurry.”
Conversely, the Cowboys did very little to disrupt Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy, his only real mishap of the game coming on his first pass attempt. A blitzing Donovan Wilson batted the ball high in the air, then batted it by DeMarvion Overshown and into the hands of defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, setting Dallas up at the Vikings 35-yard line. But even at that, the Cowboys needed the successful fourth-down fake field goal gamble and 11 plays to inch into the end zone.
Other than that, the Cowboys never could rattle the Vikings’ 2024 first-round draft choice who missed all his rookie season and was making just the eighth start of his NFL career. In seven games, Mcarthy had completed just 56 percent of his passes with nine touchdowns and 10 interceptions and a 3-4 starting record.
But against this Cowboys defense, which reverted to its old ways of missed assignments, poor coverage and little pressure, McCarthy threw for a career-high 250 yards. He completed 62.5 percent of his passes, tossed two touchdowns and even ran one in from 1 yard out with a smile on his face.
Now, Schottenheimer didn’t mince words afterward. He would say that “Brian Flores was way better than me today,” and stated the obvious by saying “and frustrated we were not better on third down.” Didn’t help against the blitzing Vikings that the Cowboys were facing third-and-5 or more eight times, a sure recipe for disaster.
And so that is that, little chance to salvage the season. Reality now sinking in at 6-7-1, needing to win the final three games to finish with a winning record. Otherwise, two wins gets the Cowboys to .500, and one win means two consecutive losings seasons for the first time since – and get this with all the negativity swirling out there about the Cowboys’ lack of playoff success – those three consecutive 5-11 losing seasons in 2000, 2001 and 2002. So only once in the past 25 seasons.
Maybe a small, unintended motivational consequence of playoffs being such a long shot.
