ARLINGTON, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys (2-3) blew a golden opportunity to position themselves as the team to beat in the NFC East after gifting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-4) their first win of the season in a 24-16 "Thursday Night Football" defeat. This defeat takes the cake as the most head-scratching loss of the short Brian Schottenheimer era, losing at home as a 9.5-point favorite against a winless squad with a backup quarterback. As Dallas trudged off their home field, a chorus of boos rang throughout the 100,000-seat AT&T Stadium like it was the Haunted Mansion.
It was so baffling that someone yelled "embarrassing" at Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott as he walked through the bowels of the stadium to the locker room by himself postgame. "It's a loss we're supposed to have, definitely supposed to have. To use the word embarrassing — it's tough," Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said.
"I feel like I'm discrediting the NFL if I use that [the word embarrassing] and particularly the Tampa Bay Bucs, the great Todd Bowles. … [But] when a winless team comes into your home stadium on a Thursday night primetime game, yeah, we're supposed to win that." All the Cowboys had to do to get a winning streak going after a road win at the Houston Texans in Week 4 was take care of business at home against a previously 0-4 Buccaneers team. The Bucs entered Week 5 with 16 sacks allowed (the most in the league and the team's most through four games since 1991), nine turnovers (the third-most in the NFL) and a negative-5 turnover differential (tied for the second-worst in the NFL). Dallas only had to play a clean game at home, and it would be 3-2 with a 10-day layoff until its next game at the Green Bay Packers on "Sunday Night Football" on Oct. 18.
Instead, the Cowboys are 2-3 and looked like a team that was playing their third game in 12 days, with the sloppiness and lack of execution in all three phases of the game, particularly on defense. The 2026 Cowboys are now the third team since 1940 to allow 375-plus total yards (419 on Thursday) without an interception in five straight games within a season. Since Dallas did so in five consecutive games to begin a season, it's the longest such streak to begin a year, per CBS Sports Research.
When asked by CBS Sports how Jones would evaluate new defensive coordinator Christian Parker's work through the first five games, Jones said he didn't even want to discuss the topic. "Well, I don't want to go there at all," Jones said. "We did all the [wrong] things to get that score to end up like it was, and I thought we had the team that could get out of here with a win.
So it's very disappointing. … I feel that he's competent." The miscues were most glaring on defense, where the Cowboys were facing undrafted rookie quarterback Jalon Daniels, making his second career start. On the Buccaneers' opening drive, the Cowboys committed three defensive penalties that helped Tampa Bay go on a 15-play, 73-yard scoring drive that tied the game at 7-7 early. Tampa Bay's drive lasted 10:58, the longest drive the franchise has had since 2007, and it also ranked as the second-longest drive by any team in "Thursday Night Football" history, per CBS Sports Research.
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