Historical notes from Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys loss to the Atlanta Falcons

The Dallas Cowboys lost to the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday in a game that felt somewhat close, but honestly never really was. On the whole the Falcons do not appear to be a particularly robust team, but the Cowboys could not push them around at all and even though they “only” lost by six points, they were sent home after not really or ever fully competing at any one point.

The days since have brought all sorts of headlines for the team. Dak Prescott will miss time with a hamstring injury suffered during the game, CeeDee Lamb sprained his AC joint and could also be out for a while and, oh yea, the team traded for wide receiver Jonathan Mingo and surrendered their 2025 fourth-round pick to do so.

But before we fully put the Atlanta loss in the box of things that we will never discuss again, we have to look at it through the prism of history.

As we do every week, we have assessed certain marks and points from the contest relative to Dallas Cowboys franchise history as well as history across the rest of the league. Thanks to our friends at Stathead and Pro Football Reference who have the tools that make these kinds of searches possible.

Rico Dowdle is unquestionably the best running back on this roster

To say there was some drama surrounding who would be active for the Cowboys at the running back position in this game would be putting it mildly. Nevertheless, Rico Dowdle was the featured back and made do with his opportunities.

In this game Dowdle had 12 carries and amassed 75 yards which is good for north of six YPC. Above, you are looking at the last 10 performances in franchise history where a runner had at least 12 carries and 6.0 YPC. Note that one had not happened in almost an entire year, it was Tony Pollard on Thanksgiving last season, but that Dowdle was the most recent one to do it before him.

He has earned his spot. Nobody else should get any serious amount of carries.

This offense is so bad at scoring points which is kind of important

The team who scores the most points in a given game wins it. Those are the rules. I regret to inform you that the Dallas Cowboys are not exactly good at doing this!

To this point in the season the Cowboys have scored only 171 points. This is the fewest amount of points through the first eight games of any season in team history since 2018 (when they famously traded for Amari Cooper before the deadline… Jonathan Mingo, everybody!).

Before that season? It was 2015 when everything was broken during Tony Romo’s injury.

The argument that this team is putting up garbage time yards seems fair

People like to say things along the lines of how the Cowboys amass work in the fourth quarter of games once things are well out of serious contention. Assessing whether or not an opposing team has checked out and isn’t trying as hard is obviously a bit difficult, but this piece of data sort of proves that point.

Sort of because you have to rely somewhat on the proverbial eye test here. Consider that the Cowboys have already lost three games this season in which they have had over 350 total yards. The games in question were this most recent one as well as the losses to the New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Ravens. The eye test method tells us that the Cowboys were never really competitive in any of those games, in a true sense at least. Whatever the case, they are already climbing the ranks of franchise history for most losses of this variety.

History tells us this team is not going to do much more this season

We are in the middle of the 17th season in franchise history in which a Cowboys team had three or fewer wins through the first eight games of the season.

As we noted last week, when forecasting this potential likelihood, only one of these teams has gone on to make the playoffs and it was that 2018 group we already referenced. Look at the final records for these teams. It is sobering. In 12 of the 16 non-2018 seasons the Cowboys finished with six or fewer wins.

Dak Prescott had a rush of 22 yards, something that is not all too common for this team these days

Getting back to the actual game for a second, an interesting moment was when quarterback Dak Prescott had a run of 22 yards. This was interesting given that the subject of Prescott running and utilizing his legs was a polarizing one all week, and he wound up doing it which was either supreme coincidence or the powers-that-be read this blog. Sup.

It had been a very long time since the Cowboys saw any player run for at least 22 yards on a single play, The last instance of it was Prescott against the Miami Dolphins on Christmas Eve last year. Before him the last players to do it were KaVontae Turpin and CeeDee Lamb. You have to go all the way back to Thanksgiving of last year, a game we have referenced already, to find a running back who did it – Tony Pollard.

Runs of 22 yards or more are not exactly common, but that the Cowboys went so long without one proves how non-explosive their offense has been for some time now.

The Cowboys were really bad on third down and fourth down, despite a number of opportunities

At one point in the Cowboys/Falcons game the FOX broadcast talked about how poor Dallas was on third and fourth down at the moment in question. With the game fully behind us, we can see that it was indeed quite poor.

All told the Cowboys had 13 attempts on third down and five more on fourth. Their conversion percentages on these downs, respectively, were 23.1% and 20%. They became just the fifth team in NFL history to have third- and fourth-down conversion percentages this low with those minimum thresholds.

This is a highly-penalized group, one of the most in team history

To wrap up we need to talk about the number of penalties that the Cowboys are currently being called for. If it feels like a lot that is because it is. Through eight games the Cowboys have 62 penalties against them. This is tied for the seventh-most through the first eight games of any season in franchise history.

Personally there are two things that stand out to me. The first is that another Mike McCarthy team is on this list in the 2021 group. That is not exactly an endorsement for him. Also bad news for McCarthy is that of the eight other teams listed besides the 2024 Cowboys, three of them were the final seasons for the coaches in question. 1999 was Chan Gailey’s last season, Wade Phillips was fired before the 2010 campaign was finished, and Jason Garrett’s time came to an end after the 2019 season.

The vibes, as they say, are not good.