News: BTB: 10 losers from the Cowboys horrifying loss to the New York Jets

Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images
There were no winners for the Cowboys.

There have been some rough losses for the Dallas Cowboys in the Jason Garrett era.

Heck, there have been some tough losses in the Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott era. We’re only on year four and you could choose from at Denver in 2017, Philadelphia later that season, Tennessee a year ago, the point is there are worthy nominees.

Losing on Sunday on the road against a previously-winless New York Jets team is right up there. This is one of the worst losses the team has ever had under this regime and as a result we’ve scrapped our five winners and five losers normal routine, there were only losers here.

Jason Garrett


You have to start with the person at the top and that’s Jason Garrett. His team did not look prepared for a group in the Jets that had yet to win a single game. He got out-coached by Adam Gase for goodness sake. Adam Gase!


It’s true that Dallas entered the game against the Jets down their two tackles, Randall Cobb, and shortly after the beginning Amari Cooper; however, there is no more room for excuses. You have to win games in the NFL, the winnable ones, falling to one of the laughingstocks of the NFL makes you one yourself.

Kellen Moore


The first three weeks may have boosted Moore’s stock more than anyone else’s. People were really wondering whether the Cowboys would move on from Jason Garrett in order to promote Moore to head coach if the Cowboys won the Super Bowl. All of that seems quite far-fetched now.

The Cowboys have struggled mightily to get going in the first half of games over the last three weeks. Against the Saints, Packers, and Jets they have one offensive touchdown in the first half.

Kris Richard


While we’re talking coaching staff, we need to talk about the guy that everyone has anointed as the savior to the team in Kris Richard. His unit has been awful.

Kris Richard yells and screams so a lot of people assume that he’s a very good coach. The reality is the Cowboys secondary has yet to take a significant leap under his direction. Chidobe Awuzie does not look like a great player in his third season and overall the Cowboys got beat play in and play out... by the Jets!

He’s not the answer at this time.

Chidobe Awuzie


It makes sense for us to move on to him, right? Chido has struggled this season.

Byron Jones is considered the best cornerback on the team, but it’s arguable that the second-best is Jourdan Lewis. In fact it feels less than arguable at this point.

The Cowboys are really hurting themselves on defense with Chido out there right now.

Leighton Vander Esch


He got worked by Aaron Jones last week and while Le’Veon Bell didn’t have four touchdowns on Sunday, LVE did not have a good day at work. Vander Esch seems like he’s whiffing every other play, the middle of the field is completely wide open.

It’s worth wondering if he’s the single biggest disappointment this season. The hype for him was high entering year two and he has yet to live up to anywhere near it.

The Hot Boyz as a whole


While I’m certainly not one who thinks DeMarcus Lawrence has been worthless this season, he certainly hasn’t been filling up any box scores. There’s more to the game, though.

While looking at stats it is worth mentioning that the Philadelphia Eagles had 10 sacks against this very same Jets team a week ago. In the defense of objectivity Philly went up against Luke Falk at quarterback while the Cowboys took on Sam Darnold, but still, Dallas managed to only get two. Two. Both of them belonged to Robert Quinn.

The Hot Boyz have cooled off.

Jason Witten


At one point early on, Jason Witten just openly dropped an easy pass. What was that?

Witten was part of the group that helped keep the Cowboys alive late in the game, but this was the slowest he’s looked this season. Generally there would be people petitioning for Blake Jarwin to see more playing time, but it’s not like he did much at the same stadium where he hauled in three touchdowns last time he visited.

When Amari Cooper left the game the Cowboys had to look elsewhere to move the ball. Jason Witten was not a good option.

Michael Gallup


This was perhaps Gallup’s worst game as a Cowboy, thankfully he’s had plenty of great ones, but the drops got to him against the Jets. Sometimes that happens.

If there’s anyone besides Amari Cooper that’s built up enough goodwill to have an off game it’s certainly Gallup, but a bad game when the offense needed to roll through him was not an ideal situation.

Brett Maher


Let’s be clear that a majority of the points that the Cowboys scored belonged to Brett Maher, but the reality is that he still missed what should be an easy field goal and the Cowboys lost by two. Three is more than two.

Maher is a wishy-washy kicker, we know that. The thing is, the Cowboys also know that. Rolling with him is like flipping a coin, in fact it is literally flipping a coin.

Brett Maher has now played in 22 games with the Cowboys. He’s missed a kick of some kind, a field goal or extra point, in 11 of them. Heads or tails?

Any sort of cushion


The Cowboys had a 3-0 lead and have now seen it vanish before their very eyes. While there were some, certainly not everyone, who were able to forgive the losses to NFC contenders such as the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers, this one is pretty unforgivable.

You’re going to lose games in the NFL, that’s a given. That’s why you have to stack up the winnable games (you know, like the ones against the Jets) and hope for the best along the rest of the way. This was a huge opportunity squandered for the Cowboys.

Continue reading...