Cowboys Corner: Grading the season so far, including an ‘F’ for defense

The first six games of the season for the Dallas Cowboys have felt more like six years. They’ve seen their Super Bowl dreams deteriorate. They’ve seen all their old problems resurface. They’ve even lost all three of their games at home.

And boy, do they ever need their bye week after their humiliating, 47-9 loss to the Detroit Lions last Sunday. They are beaten, bruised and their egos are battered. It is the perfect time for a rest.

But as they take their break, there’s no avoiding how bad the start to their season has been at times. Even their 3-0 start on the road has been propped up by games against the Browns (1-5) and Giants (2-4). It’s not all terrible. They are a .500 team and they’re only one game back in the NFC East race.

It just hasn’t been the championship-caliber start they expected in a season when their owner promised they were “all in.”

So, as the Cowboys take stock of where they are, FOX Sports NFL writers David Helman and Ralph Vacchiano will do that too, turning this week’s Cowboys corner into a not-quite-midseason report card. Here are the grades for some key people and the team overall:

Head Coach Mike McCarthy

Helman: I’ve been a longtime defender of McCarthy, because he’s brought a level of stability to Dallas that the organization hadn’t seen in decades. You can scoff at the playoff failures all you want, but 2021-23 was the first time the Cowboys had strung together three consecutive playoff appearances since they were winning championships in the 90s.

With all of that said, I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to defend six weeks into 2024. This team looks mostly abysmal on both sides of the ball, and a lot of that lies at McCarthy’s feet. He certainly deserves some blame for a shaky offensive performance, as he is in his second year as the playcaller. Everything looks hard for that unit. The Cowboys can’t run the ball, their receivers can’t generate separation and they can’t convert in the red zone. There are no “easy” buttons in this offense. Some of that might be on the front office for failing to upgrade the personnel, but a good playcaller can negate some of that. McCarthy has not.

McCarthy might not oversee the Dallas defense on a day-to-day level, but as the head coach, he still bears some responsibility for that side of the ball — which, yikes.

All in all, I’ll give McCarthy credit that the team is 3-3, and the Cowboys have managed to outplay some of the manageable teams on their schedule. That’s not the expectation or the standard in Dallas, though. 

Grade: D-

[Read more: Ranking NFL head coaches on the hot seat: Doug Pederson leads 7 at risk] 

Quarterback Dak Prescott

Vacchiano: The bar for the Cowboys quarterback is high because he’s got MVP talent. But he’s really treading a dangerous line this season because he knows he has to carry his one-dimensional team and he really doesn’t have a great array of weapons. The result is that he tends to force throws at times, which is a big reason why he’s got six interceptions so far and nearly had a few more.

 To be fair, he kind of has to force some of those throws. He needs to make things happen, because no one else on offense will. And the defenses are just waiting for him, because they certainly don’t respect the Dallas run game. But unfortunately for Prescott, he needs to recapture his MVP form for the Cowboys to be any good. That means he has to do better than the eight touchdown passes he’s thrown in his six starts, and cut down on his interceptions since he’s on pace for what would be a ridiculous (and career-high) 17. The turnovers, especially, have to stop, regardless of the circumstances. 

Grade: B

Owner/GM Jerry Jones

Vacchiano: He already got an F for the offseason when he passed on all the available running backs (including Derrick Henry, who got just $9 million guaranteed from Baltimore). Now he’s passed on available receivers like Davante Adams (traded to the Jets) and old friend Amari Cooper (traded to the Bills). Meanwhile, he continues to make the laughable excuse that they don’t have the salary cap room to add any outside help.

He does get credit for locking up Prescott and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb to long-term contract extensions and for his plan to lock up Micah Parsons in the offseason. That’s great for the future, but what about the now? Maybe he’ll wake up before the trading deadline. But for now, the only good thing Jones has done to help his team is not panic. He could become reactionary and fire McCarthy or something. But he at least is smart enough to recognize they’re just one game back in the NFC East and the division and conference are very ripe for the taking. He just has to do something to help them take it. 

Grade: D

Offense

Vacchiano: The Cowboys have the NFL’s 14th-ranked offense, and it’s only that high because of Prescott and Lamb. There is nothing else they have going for them. They are arguably the most one-dimensional team in the NFL. That is going to be a huge problem for them going forward.

 Granted, Prescott and Lamb are good enough to carry this offense a long way, especially if they get hot. But the offensive line is starting to show cracks, and that really won’t help a rushing attack that ranks dead last in the NFL, generating just 77.2 yards per game. That’s pathetic, but not surprising considering the Cowboys decided pairing Rico Dowdle with whatever is left of Ezekiel Elliott was somehow a good idea.

If they don’t develop (or find) a running game or at least a second option in the passing game, they are doomed to have a middling offense all year. 

Grade: B-

Defense

Helman: I’m going to give Mike Zimmer some credit for the factors here that are outside his control. For starters, injuries have been a real thing. Zimmer has yet to have both of his primary corners, Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland, available together for a game. That matters for the type of defenses he likes to run. Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence have both also been out now for two weeks, which makes life tough on the pass rush. Eric Kendricks also sat out of the debacle against Detroit.

That stuff does matter. It’s not a good enough of an excuse, though — not considering the depth of ineptitude we’ve seen to this point. The Cowboys were mostly healthy in Week 2 when the Saints ran over them to the tune of 190 yards, and it’s been that bad ever since. Consider this fun stat: In their three losses, their opponents have had 31 total possessions. They’ve scored on 20 of those 31 possessions, which means the Cowboys are allowing points 65% of the time their opponent touches the ball. The Saints and Lions both scored on every possession of the first half! Even if the Dallas offense was playing well, it’d be impossible to win games playing that way. They’re the worst run defense in the league and their pass defense doesn’t do much to offset that issue. It’s a brutal combination. They aren’t even getting takeaways to offset these problems, with just five on the year.

I’m not convinced it’s all Zimmer’s fault between injuries and a lack of personnel, but he also knew what he signed up for when he agreed to join on with a front office that doesn’t spend in free agency and a head coach who is in the last year of his contract. Even with all the variables, this level of execution just isn’t good enough from an NFL defense. 

Grade: F

Special Teams

Helman: Finally, something encouraging.

It might not count for much with all of the other issues, but Brandon Aubrey can officially stake his claim as the best kicker in football. The guy has been on an absolute heater, leading the league with 17 made field goals and just two misses on the year. Roughly half of those attempts have come from beyond 50 yards, with a mind-bending long of 65. It speaks to the Cowboys’ ineptitude on offense that Aubrey is routinely kicking from beyond the 35-yard line — but at least he’s justifying those decisions.

Aubrey’s ability to hit kicks from the logo means Bryan Anger hasn’t had to do as much work. The Cowboys’ punter has just 17 attempts this year, which is one of the lower totals in the league.

Add in the fact that KaVontae Turpin has been one of the league’s most dangerous returners in both the kick and punt game, and this is pretty much the only aspect of this Cowboys team worth feeling good about. 

Grade: A+

[Read more: ‘Steph Curry of kickers’: Why Cowboys’ Brandon Aubrey embraces Tom Brady’s comparison]

Overall

Vacchiano: A 3-3 record is OK. Being one game out of the division lead is OK, especially with 11 games still to go. In fact, for the most part, the Cowboys’ start to this season has been generally OK.

The problem is that they set their own bar higher than just OK. It’s not OK that they are so up and down in a year when they were so convinced that they had enough to make a Super Bowl run that they sat out the free-agent market. It’s not OK that coming off three straight 12-win seasons they somehow have to go 9-2 the rest of the way to do it again. And it’s not OK that they are 0-3 at home and two of the losses were by a combined score of 91-28. In fact, all three would have been blowouts if they hadn’t mounted a furious and futile late rally against the Ravens.

If they were a team starting over, or a perennial loser like the Jets, then sure, they could pop the champagne over this and get a mediocre grade. But the standard, as they say, is the standard. And they’re not meeting it right now. 

Grade: C

Helman: The record says they’re mediocre, but man this is one of the worst 3-3 teams I can remember watching. To illustrate my point, here’s a fun stat: there are four other 3-3 teams in the NFL right now. Those four teams have point differentials of +32, +16, 0 and -4. The Cowboys’ point differential is -42. They’re escaping by an average margin of 8 points in their wins and getting run out of the building by an average of 22 points in their losses.

So, to Ralph’s point, they’re certainly not meeting the expectation of reaching the playoffs and going beyond. But in addition, they just don’t look like a quality football team right now. Even their wins haven’t been something to get excited about.

The one bright spot is that they’ve done enough to stay in the conversation. They’re .500 and they do have a 1-0 record in the division, which isn’t a terrible place to be. But it’s going to take some serious soul-searching to right the ship. After this week off, it’s back-to-back road trips to San Francisco and Atlanta, followed by home games against Houston and Philadelphia. Then, another road trip to face the upstart Commanders. The next five opponents currently have a combined record of 19-10, and the Cowboys will be lucky to be favored in one of those games. The season’s not over, but it’s on the ropes. 

Grade: D

David Helman covers the NFL for FOX Sports and hosts the NFL on FOX podcast. He previously spent nine seasons covering the Cowboys for the team’s official website. In 2018, he won a regional Emmy for his role in producing “Dak Prescott: A Family Reunion” about the quarterback’s time at Mississippi State. Follow him on Twitter at @davidhelman_.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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