Credit Cowboys star CeeDee Lamb for facing up to reporters after the misery that was the Week 11 “Monday Night Football” loss to the Texans. The final score was 34-10, which was bad enough, but the real issue was that this game was marked by the same general sense that has lingered over most big games for Dallas this year: From the kickoff, it felt like there was no way the Cowboys could win, that they were fighting not for victory, but just to stay within shouting distance.
Lamb had eight catches for 93 yards from backup quarterback Cooper Rush, who again appeared to be in over his head in relief of the injured Dak Prescott, is out for the year with a hamstring injury. That’s not to say things were going swimmingly when Prescott was under center–but without him, the Cowboys are just playing out the string.
The Cowboys are not just 3-7, they’re also 0-5 at home.
After the game, Lamb had two words for the state of the Cowboys: “It sucks.”
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Cowboys Playing Out the String
Indeed, it’s been weeks since Cowboys backers and observers moved on from the mess that is 2024 and into the potential for change in 2025. That won’t be easy, not with the team already locked into long-term and expensive contracts for Prescott (four years, $240 million, the biggest contract in league history) and Lamb ($135 million, the second-biggest wide-receiver contract in the game).
Lamb, of course, said more than two words in his postgame presser at his locker.
“To be honest, it is not so much coping, it is moving on to the next one. I mean, you can’t dwell on it. What happens in the past is in the past. We’ll look at this film, correct what we need to. We gotta go out there and play a whole lot better. We get into the end zone, we are having a whole different conversation.”
That’s true, but that is true of all 32 teams in the NFL. Getting into the end zone more often is going to change the conversation around any team. What’s difficult to accept about this group is t
hat, for so long, they’ve been the big brother knocking around lesser teams. They were 36-15 in the past three years, after all.