Coming off a wild comeback win over the Houston Texans this past Sunday, a victory that upped their record to 2-2, the Dallas Cowboys were expected to get over .500 for the first time this season, as they welcomed the winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers to AT&T Stadium on Thursday night.
But as the saying goes, that's why you play the games.
Now, to be fair, all four of the Bucs' losses to start the season came by seven points or fewer, and their four opponents currently have a combined record of 11-5, with two of them sitting in solo first place in their respective divisions. Nevertheless, the Cowboys were still expected to win this game, but that obviously didn't happen, as Tampa Bay came in and controlled the football for nearly 40 minutes en route to a 24-16 victory.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the Dallas defense struggled yet again, allowing the Bucs' offense to rack up 419 total yards, 241 of which came on the ground. That's where the bulk of the blame belongs, of course, but on the other side of things, Dak Prescott certainly didn't play his best game of football on Thursday night, putting forth a performance that we're going to grade as a "C+."
Dak Prescott deserves a C+ grade in Cowboys' Week 5 loss to the Bucs
The Cowboys' opening offensive drive of the night was promising, as Prescott led a 70-yard touchdown drive in just a little over four minutes, completing three of five passes for 37 yards, with Javonte Williams (and a couple of penalties) picking up the rest.
Most of the remainder of the first half didn't go nearly as smoothly, as Dallas gained just 29 combined yards on its next three possessions. The fifth drive of the night was a success, however, one that began with Prescott hitting Ryan Flournoy with a 48-yard strike and ended with a Brandon Aubrey 41-yard field goal that gave the Cowboys a 10-7 lead heading into the break.
After the Bucs scored a touchdown to open the third quarter, needing just two plays to do so, by the way, Prescott threw just his second interception of the season on the Cowboys' first drive of the second half, a turnover Tampa Bay ultimately turned into another touchdown.
Now, some might not put Prescott at fault for that pick, as the ball bounced around several times after Flournoy failed to make the grab, but this ball probably shouldn't have even been thrown in the first place.
For starters, there were two Buccaneers defenders swarming Flournoy, and secondly, the velocity Dak put on the ball was just far too much for his guy to handle in that short space.
To his credit, Prescott was absolutely magnificent after the Dallas defense was actually able to come up with a goal-line stop in the fourth quarter, as he led a 99-yard touchdown drive in just a touch over three minutes, completing six of eight passes for 90 yards, with throws of 16, 15, 13, 20, 8, and 18 yards, with the final toss going for a touchdown to George Pickens, who had his best game of the year with nine catches for 130 yards.
Despite only being down eight points at 24-16, the Cowboys inexplicably went for two, with Prescott's pass to Flournoy falling incomplete. No matter what Brian Schottenheimer says, there was absolutely no reason that this play should have ever happened.
But it obviously didn't matter in the end anyway.
While Dak did get one more chance to tie the game and was leading Dallas down the field, connecting on throws of 6, 26, 7, 12, and 9 yards to get the Cowboys down to the Buccaneers' 24-yard line, his last throw of the night resulted in his second interception, although this pick can't be pinned on Prescott, as he hit the hands of Jake Ferguson, who simply couldn't handle it.
Yes, this ball had some zip on it as well, but it's still a pass that should've been caught. But it wasn't, and a few plays later, the game was over.
There were unquestionably some strong moments for Prescott in this loss, but while he did throw for 316 yards, the consistency and accuracy we saw from him the first four weeks just wasn't there from an overall standpoint, as he completed a season-worst 57.1 percent of his passes and earned a season-low 69.1 passer rating.
Dak Prescott stopped short of calling Dallas' loss 'embarrassing'
Afterward, he wouldn't go as far as to call the defeat embarrassing, as he didn't want to downplay the performance from Tampa Bay's defense, which is a top-10 defense in the NFL at this point, but he certainly wasn't happy with how things played out.
"To use the word embarrassing; it's tough. I feel like I'm discrediting the NFL if I use that and particularly the Tampa Bay Bucs, the great Todd Bowles, a coach, and defensive-coached team. The guy's been a winning coach for a long time, whether he's been a head coach or a defensive coordinator. That's the plan and what they did tonight is the reason for that. To say embarrassing, I think I'd be discrediting them," Prescott said.
"But, we were definitely supposed to win this game, that we're supposed to have on paper or whichever way you want to look at it. I think Schotty said it best in the locker room, in this league, you've got to win the games you're supposed to win. When a winless team comes into your home stadium on a Thursday night primetime game, yeah, we're supposed to win that. It sucks and right up there close to embarrassing, but I don't know if I would say that."
After a mini-bye, Prescott and the Cowboys will look to get back to .500 when they return to action in Week 6 against the Green Bay Packers.
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