FRISCO, Texas – After a long and incredibly difficult bye week, the Cowboys will be back in action on Monday night against the Las Vegas Raiders.
In their 24 road games following a bye, Dallas has gone 15-9 in those settings, the most road wins after a bye in the NFL since 1990. A win on Monday would push the Cowboys to a 4-5-1 record, an essential win that would keep them alive – albeit a big hill to climb – in the playoff race.
What needs to happen for Dallas to come away with a victory? Let's talk about it in this week's Here We Goooo:
Hit Ashton Jeanty early, can't miss tackles
In the draft process, the Cowboys loved now Raiders RB Ashton Jeanty. Well, every team in the NFL actually was enamored with the former Boise State Bronco who finished as the runner up for the Heisman Trophy in 2024.
Now, Dallas' defense will travel to face the player that went to high school at Frisco Lone Star just 15 minutes away from the team's headquarters at the Star. Through nine games this season, Jeanty has 547 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns.
What made Jeanty special coming out of college was the fact that he seemingly never went down to the ground on first contact. That skillset has translated to the NFL level too, as he's forced 47 missed tackles and gained 228 yards off of them. His 33.1% missed tackles forced rate is the second highest in the NFL trailing only Jonathan Taylor.
Jeanty has just 87 yards rushing before contact this season, with a majority of his workload coming after he's been hit with 460 yards after contact this season. While that's a good chunk teams have also been able to stuff him 41 times this year, the most in the NFL from running backs with 100 or more carries.
Defensively, the Cowboys have missed 55 tackles this season, the 13th highest in the NFL this season. The Cowboys have missed a tackle on 24.1% of their tackle attempts on running back carries, which comes in right about the league average of 23.5%. This is where Dallas' deadline acquisitions of Quinnen Williams and Logan Wilson can make the biggest impact: Not only making the plays in the run game when it's presented to them but taking attention so that their teammates can make the plays as well.
Stopping Jeanty is no easy task, but teams have been able to do it consistently this year, giving the Cowboys a prime opportunity to maybe find some momentum defensively against the run going into a very difficult schedule to close out the year.
Capitalize on turnover opportunities
A lot of the Cowboys' games this season, and even dating back to 2024, were roller coaster games. There's a chance that Monday night could be the same.
Why? Well, the mixture of Dallas' defensive struggles in the first half of the season, and Raiders' offensive turnover problems, with QB Geno Smith sitting at second in the NFL in interceptions this season with 12.
Smith has thrown an interception in seven of Las Vegas' nine games this season. He's thrown multiple picks in three games. All that to say, the Cowboys defense should have their chances to get takeaways in this game.
This year, Dallas only has picked off four passes as a defense, and they're giving up the fourth-most passing yards per game with 254.4. That creates the potential for both Smith having success through the air, especially with an elite tight end like Brock Bowers, but for the Cowboys to also get their offense a few extra possessions.
And frankly, a few extra possessions might be all the Cowboys need to walk out with a victory given how well they've played throughout the year, even though they struggled going into the bye.
Need a bounce back game from the offensive line
Speaking of the Cowboys' offense, if they want to go into the second half of the season on a role, they're going to need better play from the offensive line.
After Cooper Beebe returned from IR, Dallas' Monday night game against the Cardinals was the first time the full starting offensive line was back together again since Week 2. Given how they played in their first two games, the thought was things would be better.
Instead, Dak Prescott was sacked a season-high five times against Cardinals defensive line that had just 13 sacks, among the lowest in the league, coming into the game. Over the past three games, Prescott has been sacked eight times. Through the Cowboys' first six games, he was sacked a total of seven times. That doesn't even account all the times that he's been hit the last two weeks as well, which has been plenty.
The biggest matchup Dallas needs to be concerned with is at right tackle, where Brian Schottenheimer said there's an open competition. Terence Steele has been the starter all year but was replaced by Nate Thomas in the second half of last week's game against the Cardinals. That's where Maxx Crosby typically lines up (422 of his 509 snaps have come on the left edge). While Crosby has a career low 9.3% pressure rate this season, he's also been chipped or doubled on a career high 32.3% of his rushes.
Considering Steele has allowed a 10% pressure rate this year, 24th among 36 right tackles with 100 pass blocks, and Thomas allowed four pressures and a sack on his 18 snaps last week. So, simple to say the Cowboys will probably try to chip and double Crosby when they can and force the other Raiders defensive linemen (only two of which have more than 1 sack this season) beat them.
