Even before Jerry Jones told reporters that Dak Prescott will miss multiple weeks with a fractured joint in his thumb, the Cowboys were approaching the nascent stages of potential, gawk-worthy spectacle. The classic Cowboys stuff that we haven’t seen in years. The kind of thick, multilayered chaos that Jones used to live for.
No one likes to balloon a one-game sample size, but the Mike McCarthy era has already shed most of its convenient excuses. The Prescott injury in 2020, when he missed 11 games, bought time. The defensive coordinator change that following year, moving from Mike Nolan to Dan Quinn, bought time. It was all somewhat dismissable and couchable as the kind of growing pains a team must endure.
But after getting nearly blanked on national television in the season opener, the McCarthy regime flamed out the remainder of its goodwill before receiving the news that matchups against the Bengals, Giants and Commanders (at least) will take place with Cooper Rush under center. That’s two division opponents that won their openers and the defending AFC champions; it greatly scrambles the odds of Dallas keeping pace in the division for a little while.
