Cowboys vs. Lions historical notes: Defensively this team is approaching all-time bad

Something we do every week around here is take a look at the Dallas Cowboys game that we just saw and compare it to various points in franchise history. The goal is simple and obvious. We want to understand where the team stacks up against groups of old, whether with regards to the game at hand specifically or where the team is at the point in the season in question.

Doing that in that exact way this week feels a bit difficult as there are only so many ways to say that it was the worst loss ever experienced in the Jerry Jones era of ownership and therefore in the history of AT&T/Cowboys Stadium. This is of course from a point differential standpoint.

We will do our best to try though. Buckle up and put on your hazmat suit.

Shout out to our friends at Stathead and Pro Football Reference who help make these types of searches possible.

Ezekiel Elliott is doing very little with a decent amount, and the alleged help waiting in the wings has done it before

Much has been made about the Cowboys’ running game and the fact that it is the worst in the NFL. This isn’t hyperbolic. Dallas has the fewest yards per game from a rushing standpoint and the fewest team rushing yards over expected, according to NFL Pro. Some of this obviously is impacted by games getting so far out of hand, but even then it’s not like the room has talent that is simply lacking opportunities because of the flow of a contest.

Through six games this season Ezekiel Elliott has received 38 carries. He has turned those into 115 yards which is obviously not great. Since the beginning of last season there are only five running backs (Russell Wilson is on this list) who have had at least 38 carries and had no more than 115 yards, aka four other runners who have not exactly made lemonade.

It is not exactly a fun feeling to see Dalvin Cook on this list! Cook is, of course, somebody who many fans are calling to see active. He may be on this list and might not be an improvement, but the run game is at a place where “any change might help” is a fair rallying cry.

What a mess.

This is the second-worst the Cowboys have ever been at this point at running the ball

Along these lines, it should not shock you to learn that the Cowboys are having one of their worst rushing starts to a season ever. Literally ever.

As a team they only have 463 rushing yards through six games. Only once has a Dallas Cowboys group had fewer rushing yards than that through the first six games of a season. Any time you are in the same sentence as the 1989 Dallas Cowboys things are tough.

The leading rusher for the 1989 Dallas Cowboys was Paul Palmer. He had 446 yards for the team then and even played part of the season for the Detroit Lions.

Again, not great company.

This is literally one of the worst defenses ever at home through the first three games

The Lions ultimately put up 47 points across all of Sunday, a rare type of thing in the NFL. We all saw Detroit trying to rub the Cowboys’ nose in the game and the fallout of that even continued relative to the lack of punting. On Tuesday afternoon, after all of Jerry Jones’ antics, the Lions social team shared a video that was a “highlight reel” of their punter. He was literally holding kicks in all of them. It was an outstanding troll job.

But the 47 points are only part of what the Cowboys have allowed in their home building so far this year. Dallas has allowed 119 total points to be scored against them at AT&T Stadium – it has only been three games – and that puts them in some more poor company.

The last team across the entire NFL to allow at least 119 points through their first three home games was, amazingly, the Dallas Cowboys! It was the 2020 group with Mike Nolan calling the shots (and avoiding hot sauce in his eye). Unlike now, the offense was at least doing their best to go shot for shot on the other side of things.

What is troubling is that the cutoff for this at nine teams wasn’t just for fun. This is the entire list of teams to have allowed at least 119 points scored against them in their first three home games in all of NFL history.

Yup.

This was the worst loss in the Jerry Jones era and obviously AT&T Stadium’s history

We noted this up top, but it felt fair to include every game that exists in this sort of territory for the purposes of full and total context.

What you are looking at here is any game in which the point differential in a Cowboys game was 38 points or more against them. The franchise as a whole has suffered worse losses in this capacity, but they have been on the road.

As many will note, the last game (literally the most recent one!) in which the Cowboys were handled this badly by an opponent was the last time that Wade Phillips patrolled the sideline as the group’s head coach. He was fired right after that 2010 loss that was amazingly and all-time coincidentally at the hands of Mike McCarthy’s Green Bay Packers who would go on to win the Super Bowl that season in the very building that the game we are talking about now just happened.

You can’t write this stuff!

The Cowboys have tied an all-time horrible thing in terms of total yards allowed at home

There has been a lot of focus on what the Cowboys are doing and how poorly they are playing in their home building. This is not done for the purposes of isolating games to cherry pick, but the sample size is large enough to make it fair to wonder what is going on here.

In fact, if we stretch back to last season, the Cowboys have been quite poor defensively in their own building for a troublesome period now. Beginning with last season’s game against the Lions, another fun coincidence, the team has allowed 415 total yards or more in five straight games. To be clear these are all home games.

The group of games involved does include the playoffs so we are talking about the win against Detroit, the playoff loss to Green Bay and then all three games this season (New Orleans, Baltimore and recently the Lions once more). What is alarming about this is that the Cowboys have officially tied the longest streak in NFL history of home games where they have allowed 415 yards or more to be found against them.

As you can see the other team on this list is the 2012 New Orleans Saints. Remember that this was the season in which Sean Payton served a season-long suspension for the team’s Bountygate scandal so they were in a bit of a mess, plus those older Saints teams were always suspect on the defensive side of the ball (after winning the Super Bowl, of course).

In case you are curious, the next home game for Dallas (and therefore the game in which the tie can be broken and Dallas can stand alone) is against the Philadelphia Eagles.