Cowboys looking for first complete game of season to win at Packers
The Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers. Lambeau Field at night in primetime in mid-October. This week’s looming Sunday Night Football matchup has deeply rooted, historic reasons to be epic, but right now only the home team fanbase is in this kind of hopeful mood.
Cowboys fans are more so dreading the task at hand of trying to defend well enough in this game to not drop a second straight game, and fall to 2-4 on a season that was supposed to be so much more. The Cowboys can’t count on the divine intervention of seeing all three other teams in their division lose or tie head-to-head like last week. They need to get in the win column.
The Packers can’t afford to take their foot off the gas even a little bit – they are in a three way tie at 3-2 with the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears, all looking up at the undefeated Minnesota Vikings.
With that, it’s time to get to our weekly win/loss scenarios for the Cowboys in their second road appearance on SNF this season.
The Dallas Cowboys will beat the Green Bay Packers if…
…they knock Jordan Love off his spot, and run the ball well.
We don’t often go with a two-fer across both main phases of the game for these scenarios, but in a way maybe that speaks to the desperation mode the Cowboys are in after two bad losses in 12 days prior.
Starting with the defense, there is no way to sugarcoat how lopsided of a matchup the Packers receivers against the Cowboys secondary, specifically the safeties, is in this game. There really is no conceivable way for the Cowboys to “win” this matchup.
Malik Hooker and Markquese Bell played a lot of safety snaps against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a defense still without P.J. Locke or Jalen Thompson, and neither is good enough at sustaining deep coverage or plastering receivers downfield to be relied on against Christian Watson and Matthew Golden.
This is why the focus shifts to the Dallas pass rush instead. Both Watson and Golden had over 120 yards in the Packers’ 31-7 win against the Bears, with Watson having two touchdowns. The second-best receiver duo in the league when it comes to yardage output (the first being George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb for the Cowboys) tore up the Bears without a whole lot of route creativity whatsoever.
Just good old-fashioned getting behind the defense, something the Cowboys were susceptible to in all of the crunch-time moments of the game against the Bucs. The Cowboys’ best chance to not allow this to happen to them is to not even let these types of routes develop downfield by not giving Jordan Love the time to throw them.
This will be the first game the Cowboys have Mike Pettine assisting their defensive coaching alongside coordinator Christian Parker. It may be a bit fantasy football-ish to expect anything immediately tangible to come of this, but Pettine’s area of expertise is indeed getting pressure in the front seven.
The Cowboys have teased personnel changes coming off their mini-bye, and have rookie edge rusher Malachi Lawrence coming on stronger each week, as well as James Houston on the bench awaiting more opportunity. Pettine’s most recent job was with the Vikings from 2022-25, working alongside the most blitz happy coordinator in the league Brian Flores. He’ll have experience to bank on coaching against this Packers offense specifically.
All of this doesn’t need to show up in a massive way in the stat sheet when it comes to sacks, but this is absolutely not a game where Jordan Love can be comfortable in the pocket all night.
On offense, the greatest band-aid of all is and always has been the run game. The Packers have been beaten badly on the ground in a few games this season, mainly by teams that had more than one back they could rely on though. The Cowboys have nothing even resembling a threat out of the backfield beyond Javonte Williams right now, but after the Tampa Bay loss, simply remembering they can lean on Williams as a bell cow would be a welcome sign.
When the Cowboys are forced into a high-volume of passes, the likelihood of the negative plays that have called into question Brian Schottenheimer’s play-calling and scheming rearing their ugly head skyrockets. The pass game still needs to shine in this game and the Cowboys need to finish the majority of their drives with seven points, but if the backbone of these drives are the run game, the Cowboys will be in the best position to win they can ask for.
The Dallas Cowboys will lose to the Green Bay Packers if…
…they don’t win on third down.
Only the Detroit Lions and Denver Broncos have given up more third-down conversions this season than the Packers defense, and no team has converted less than the Packers offense. Before getting ahead of ourselves in thinking this is a big area the Cowboys can exploit, their own defense had had the fourth most third down attempts against them this season.
If the eye test compared to this showed that the Cowboys were playing stout defense and getting off the field, that would be great, but we know this is more a result of not even being able to get teams into third downs via giving up big plays on earlier downs. Offensively, the Cowboys have faced virtually the same number of third downs as the Packers.
The Packers offense delivered the kill shot on the very first drive of the second half last week, turning a 14-7 lead into 21-7 with a 3rd-and-22 touchdown of 53 yards to Watson. This was an insurmountable lead for the Tyson Bagent-led Bears offense, one that served as a bit of a “get right” opponent for the Packers defense, who held the Bears to 4-14 third down conversions.
The Cowboys defense had gaffes on similar third and long situations against the Bucs, and those simply cannot happen against much stiffer competition on the road this time out. They also punted on offense at a higher rate they had going all the way back to last year, making sustaining drives more of a focus area against the Packers. This offense is simply too talented to be leaving third and shorts on the field instead of using them as opportunity to play the game on their terms.
The money down is going to be a deciding factor as always in this game, and if the Cowboys can’t find a way to win with some margin here, it could be a long night. Another thing to watch for along these lines is the fact the Packers have the third most penalties in the league this season.
The Cowboys were handed a golden opportunity to look more convincing the last two weeks, when the Texans committed 13 penalties against them but Dallas only won by four, and the Bucs beat them in Jerryworld despite 14 penalties. This is not a good forecast at all, but a chance to right this wrong in time to save the season is still in sight for the Cowboys at Lambeau.
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