The Cowboys lost 24-16 at home Thursday night to a Tampa Bay team that had not won a game all season. Dallas is 2-3. Baker Mayfield did not play for the Buccaneers.
Tampa Bay’s quarterback was Jalon Daniels, an undrafted rookie making his second career start. He completed 76 percent of his throws for 189 yards and a touchdown with a 110.2 rating. The Buccaneers held the ball for 39 minutes and 21 seconds.
Dak Prescott Would Not Say the Word
Prescott threw for 316 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions, completing 57.1 percent for a 69.1 passer rating. Both picks came off his receivers’ hands, one tipped by Ryan Flournoy and one by Jake Ferguson, which is rotten luck stacked on top of a rough night.
Asked whether the loss was embarrassing, he circled the word carefully. “It sucks. Right up there close to embarrassing but I don’t know if I would say that,” Prescott said. He explained that using it would discredit Tampa Bay and the league, then landed on the honest part: “But we were definitely supposed to win this game.”
He is right that the Buccaneers earned it. He is also describing a home loss to a winless team quarterbacked by an undrafted rookie, and respect for the opponent does not soften what that does to a season.
The Turnover Math Was the Whole Game
Dallas gave the ball away three times and took it away zero times. Two Prescott interceptions and a KaVontae Turpin fumble on a kickoff return, with nothing coming back the other way. Tampa Bay outgained Dallas 419 to 366, and Bucky Irving ran for 165 yards at 7.9 yards a carry.
George Pickens was the one real bright spot with nine catches for 130 yards and a touchdown. That is the version of Pickens the Cowboys wanted when they brought him in, and it did not come close to being enough.
What It Means: the CeeDee Lamb Question
Lamb left in the fourth quarter with a quad injury after two catches for nine yards on a season-low 34 offensive snaps. That was his first game under 70 percent of the offense’s snaps since Week 18 of last season. Four days earlier he had caught 17 passes for 189 yards against Houston.
Brian Schottenheimer said Lamb took a hit to the same thigh he hurt against the Texans. Todd Archer reported the quad tightened up after contact to that area, and Ian Rapoport reported it is a quad bruise that is not expected to be a long-term problem. Nobody has put a return date on it, and the Cowboys have not ruled him out of anything yet.
The Thursday kickoff does buy Dallas extra recovery days before its next game, at Green Bay. That is the only good news in this. A 2-3 team with road trips to Green Bay and Philadelphia ahead cannot afford a banged-up leg on its best receiver, and this is the second hit to that same leg inside a week.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.