Sorting the Sunday Pile, Week 9: Cowboys’ collapse falls on Jerry Jones, Saints may also need a reboot

To borrow a lyric from a popular boy band song morphed with the name of my good friend Abby Miller’s fantasy team: Dak Street is not back. In fact, the Cowboys aren’t just not back, they’ve morphed into a complete and total disaster. And Jerry Jones has no one — not his coaching staff, not his players, not local sports talk radio hosts — to blame but himself. 

NFL owners don’t get fired because of the title. But Jerry’s title carries a little more weight as he’s also the general manager. Any other general manager who rolled out this roster, with these variant contract situations, well, they’d be fired. But Jerry won’t fire himself. He can’t fire Dak. He can’t fire CeeDee. So he’s eventually going to fire Mike McCarthy. 

Maaaaaybe the Cowboys rip off some wins and make a playoff run. I feel pretty freaking stupid for suggesting they would win the NFC East. And at 3-5 now, there’s nothing encouraging about where they stand or where they might go. Prescott suffered multiple injuries on Sunday, including a hamstring problem and a nebulous issue with his throwing hand. Lamb left the game for a stretch as well and is scheduled for an MRI on his AC joint. 

Things are falling apart. Or, if you prefer: the Cowboys are terrible. But don’t take my word for it, just “listen” to Dak.

There’s a very good chance we see a lot of Cooper Rush the rest of the way, which makes it very unlikely we see Dallas perform well on offense. The Falcons aren’t a great defense, even if the defensive coaching is good. The Cowboys should have been, at worst, in a situation where they needed a stop or needed a score late with a chance to win. They only lost by six but, much like previous pyrrhic Dallas losses, it didn’t ever feel like they were the better team. 

Meanwhile — and I hate beating this home, but it’s just facts, folks — the Commanders are 7-2 after beating the Giants. Their head coach, Dan Quinn, had this defense operating as a top-10 unit for half a decade after taking over for Mike Nolan’s disaster of a defensive unit. The Cowboys defense has cratered, while the Commanders have soared up to a top-half-of-the-league unit. It really doesn’t feel like a coincidence.

I don’t need to tell you who let Quinn walk out of the building, either. It’s the GM. The same guy who waited to sign Dak. The same guy who waited to sign Lamb. The same guy who said Derrick Henry was too expensive (because he waited, even though Henry wasn’t). The same guy who didn’t add anything other than Ezekiel Elliott — who was inactive Sunday and didn’t travel to Atlanta because of disciplinary reasons — to the running back room this offseason. The same guy who said the team was “all in” on 2024. The same guy who thought the defense would be fine. 

Running an NFL team is a hard thing to do. But Cowboys fans should be angry at the team they’re seeing on the field this season. Almost every fanbase would be calling for the coach and GM to be fired after this ugly start. But you can’t fire the owner and when the owner is the GM, he’s untouchable too. 

Speaking of change…

The Saints need to make one. Or two. Maybe three or more. But the Dennis Allen/Derek Carr reunion, which brought together a coach/quarterback combo that won literally zero games with the Raiders in its previous iteration, isn’t working. Sunday’s loss on the road to the Panthers as favorites of a touchdown or more is incredibly damning. 

One, it’s the Panthers. They’re terrible. Charles Barkley level TURRIBLE. And the Saints managed to lose to them in humiliating fashion, falling 23-22 in Charlotte on Sunday. Digging deeper into the box score, it’s really bad. 

The Saints outgained the Panthers, 427-246, in total yardage and 25-15 in first downs. The Panthers weren’t even good on third-down conversions, mustering just a 4 of 10 line. The Saints “how did we lose” advanced analytics box score is going to be a bad one. 

New Orleans completely controlled the game to the point it is in a solo silo for a two-decade span in terms of performance. 

If you dominate in yardage and lose, it’s one thing. But when you dominate in yardage, run the ball at will AND win the turnover battle and still lose? That’s a really, really bad look. But here we are! 

The Saints started the season 2-0, winning both games by 20-plus points. Injuries mounted like crazy and they melted down. But Chris Olave was healthy for this game, at least until Derek Carr — who also returned from injury — hung him out to dry to the point he ended up in a Charlotte hospital (he’s expected to head back with the Saints). 

The throw launched a NSFW Michael Thomas tweetstorm of epic proportions.

Carr is now the first quarterback in NFL history to lose to 31 different NFL teams. These are the facts and I am simply presenting them. The only team Carr hasn’t lost to? The Raiders, who he played for over the course of nine seasons. He’ll get the chance later this year, assuming he’s still starting at quarterback for Dennis Allen … assuming Allen is still coaching.

The Lions are a truck (again)

Every week it feels like I write something about the Lions being maybe the best team in football, but then every week they go out and do something that leads me to believe it’s more true than the week before. Rolling into Green Bay on Sunday against a really tough and well-coached divisional foe and dominating them when the conditions are disgusting in Jared Goff’s first outdoor game of the year? 

This team is maybe the best in the league despite losing their best pass-rusher and a DPOY candidate a few weeks ago in Aidan Hutchinson. They don’t make big mistakes, their offense is a well-oiled machine right now and the combination of Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery has proven both perfect and lethal. 

GM Brad Holmes, head coach Dan Campbell and everyone involved in the front office in Detroit deserves a standing ovation for this turnaround. This team was the worst in football for years and years and years. Matthew Stafford’s time there provided a brief glimpse of hope, but the roster wasn’t good enough around him for more than a year or so of success. 

Now? This roster is loaded. Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson has turned down multiple head-coaching opportunities to stay in a place that’s stable. Aaron Glenn’s got the defense dialed to a very opportunistic point. 

Want to get down and dirty? The Lions are here for it. Need a shootout? The Lions can score with you and most of the time outscore you. They’re 7-1 with a lone Week 2, one-score loss to the Bucs looming as an aberration. 

The Rams!

Don’t count out my boys yet. Future Hall of Famer Matthew Stafford — and if you don’t think he’s a HOF QB you don’t know ball — delivered a kill shot Sunday in Seattle with a laser to DeMarcus Robinson that ended up giving the Rams a 26-20 overtime win against the Seahawks.

The victory puts the Rams, who were kind of bandying about the idea of trading both Stafford and Cooper Kupp at .500. More importantly, they’re 4-4 and just behind the Cardinals at 5-4. The 49ers are banged up and the Seahawks are stumbling. 

Los Angeles defense isn’t as good without Aaron Donald, which shouldn’t be a surprise. He’s very good! But it’s a testament to Sean McVay’s coaching and Stafford’s tough-as-nails quarterback play that the Rams are still in the hunt. 

The schedule is kind of great for Los Angeles, too. They get the Dolphins (who are healed up, that game is a DFS dream potentially) and then the Patriots, Eagles and Saints. They should go 2-2 worst case, and with Kupp looking fully healthy, Robinson balling out and Puka Nacua somehow fine despite an insane week where he was probably not playing, then crushed, then almost definitely playing then suddenly ejected for kind of punching someone … the Rams are getting healthy at the right time and are a problem in the NFC West.