Cowboys Are Who We Thought They Were — and Bills Might Be Now, Too
Stop me if you've heard this before, but the Dallas Cowboys no-showed in another marquee game.
The Bills hosed the Cowboys 31-10 in a Sunday afternoon monsoon, upending what we thought we knew about both teams once again.
Both teams were coming off perhaps their biggest and most important wins of the season. For the Bills, that meant outlasting Patrick Mahomes and the archnemesis Chiefs to keep Buffalo's postseason hopes alive. For the Cowboys, it was finally adding a big win against a top opponent, taking down the division rival Eagles in a game that was never close.
Sunday felt like a King of the Hill battle for two of the league's hottest teams after last week, but the game fizzled out quickly.
By midway through the second quarter, it already felt like it was over.
The Bills took the opening kickoff and marched right down the field. And they did it mostly by running the football right up the gut of this vaunted Cowboys defense.
That set the tone for the next three hours. Forget all that Dak Prescott and Josh Allen buzz. This was James Cook's game.
Cook ran the ball 25 times for 179 yards and a touchdown and added 42 and a score as a receiver. Buffalo eliminated the mighty Dallas pass rush by simply not passing. Instead the Bills ran, ran, then ran some more. Buffalo finished with 49 carries for 266 yards and three scores on the ground.
The Bills ran for 5.4 yards a carry. They challenged the Cowboys to a game of Big Boy Football and left Dallas standing with its pants down on national television.
For the Cowboys, this felt like a replay of every big Dallas game of the last few years.
Dallas was a complete no-show in every facet of the game.
The Cowboys defense fell flat, unable to stop the run or get off the field. DPOY contender Micah Parsons made little impact with just two tackles. DaRon Bland and all his pick-6s were nowhere to be found with just one tackle.
All that Dallas defensive speed was useless. Buffalo was bigger, stronger, tougher.
The Bills barely even felt the Cowboys.
For two months, the Dallas's offense has been nearly unstoppable. On Sunday, it disappeared.
In seven games since the Cowboys' bye, Dak Prescott had averaged 310 passing yards and over three touchdowns a game. He finished Sunday with a measly 134 yards and never found the end zone. He added a late interception and was especially impotent on late downs.
CeeDee Lamb had seven catches for 53 yards on 10 targets, a perfectly fine outcome for Buffalo. Jake Ferguson had six catches for 44 yards. Brandin Cooks was open deep for a TD on the opening drive but Prescott overthrew him. He finished with two catches for 10 yards on six targets.
Remember when the Cowboys were a running team? With the passing game failing, the Cowboys were unable to turn to the run for help. Non-Prescott Cowboys ran 16 times for 62 yards, under 4.0 YPC, a stark contrast to Buffalo's dominant attack.
Dallas played and coached like the game was over midway through the second quarter. The Cowboys kept the first-string offense on the field late, trying to get Prescott some MVP stats and minimize the embarrassing margin of defeat, but Dallas didn't even bother onside-kicking after a late score or using its timeouts to extend the game.
Typical Cowboys, always trying to win a beauty contest only Dallas thinks it's competing in.
In the end, this felt like a replay for Dallas.
It was every big game of the last few years against the 49ers, the Eagles, pick another opponent.
It was every big playoff moment. Déjà vu all over again.
We already knew the Cowboys are incredible front-runners, untouchable with a big lead when those pass rushers can pin their ears back and tee off. We already know how good Dallas is at home.
They were neither of those things on Sunday, and it felt like it.
Now at 10-4 in the cruel NFC East, the Cowboys aren't going to get to play many more games in that spot. This loss all but relegates Dallas to the NFC 5-seed, sending them on the road for the playoffs. It means going to both San Francisco and Philadelphia, just to make the Super Bowl.
Dallas pounded Philly last week in Texas but has been trounced by the 49ers the last few meetings in games that felt much like Sunday. And now that matchup will almost certainly come on the road, where Dallas is just 3-4, compared to an untouchable 7-0 at home, now meaningless for the postseason.
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A 10-4 season is no failure, but this regular season is pretty close to a bust for the Cowboys.
This is a team that had real Super Bowl hopes and finally looked like it over the past month or two, but Sunday was just the same old Cowboys.
Dak Prescott for MVP? You can probably put a fork in those hopes after yet another no-show in a huge game.
Dallas's regular season is effectively over now. Really, Dallas won't play another important game for another five weeks. The Cowboys can "prove" all they want against the Dolphins next week or against an outmatched NFC South foe in the opening round of the playoffs.
But until they show up for one of these big games against a hot team, they're just the same old Cowboys — exactly who we thought they were.
But Sunday was about the Bills just as much as the Cowboys — maybe more.
Sean McDermott's defense is BACK.
Remember when Buffalo's defense fell apart in October after Matt Milano, Tre'Davious White, and DaQuan Jones all went out for the season? The Bills gave up 29 points in a loss to the Patriots. They got sliced apart by the Jaguars and Bengals. The pass defense cratered, and most pundits left the D for dead.
That defense has been resurrected since, and it completely shut down an unstoppable Dallas attack.
The Cowboys finished with just 195 yards. Dallas picked up only 14 first downs, half as many as Buffalo, with a meager 3.4 yards per play.
And even those numbers are superficially inflated by a garbage-time Cowboys touchdown drive to end the game. Before that, the Cowboys managed a measly 115 yards in 42 plays, good for just eight first downs and an awful 2.7 yards per play.
If you've been paying attention, this revitalized Bills defense is no surprise.
Buffalo's D ranked third in DVOA over the first four weeks. Then, after all those injuries, the defense fell apart and plummeted to 31st in DVOA for Weeks 5 through 9. That's about when many stopped paying attention.
But since then, McDermott's guys have bounced back in a big way to seventh in DVOA the last five games — and that should get a lot better after Sunday's performance.
Defense takes time, and it makes sense that McDermott would need some time with a unit with so many fresh faces in new roles and new schemes since Milano was so central to what the team did. Rasul Douglas was a big addition at the trade deadline, as expected. The Bills defense is balling.
Buffalo's defense isn't the only thing evolving.
The Bills had quietly been producing in the run game for weeks already. The offense was good this whole time, despite the turnovers, but now it's unleashed James Cook into a bigger role, both as a runner and as a receiver, and the nation saw that impact on Sunday.
Early in the season, Buffalo's offense felt like a one-man machine, maybe two if Stefon Diggs was having a big game.
The wildest and most encouraging part about Sunday's win was how minimal Josh Allen's role was in it all.
Allen completed seven passes Sunday.
SEVEN.
Allen threw for under 100 yards — 94 to be exact — and completed under half his passes. He threw one TD and ran for another but didn't do much on the ground otherwise, with eight carries for 24 yards.
And here's the thing — he didn't need to, and that's what's really terrifying.
For years, Josh Allen has been a bona fide MVP candidate for the Bills, doing a little bit of everything. He runs, he throws, he's the answer on late downs, the go-to on every big play. He's never won MVP but he's been one of the most valuable players in football year after year.
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The most encouraging thing for Buffalo on Sunday was how much the team around Allen did.
The Bills didn't even need Allen to play like an MVP. The defense and rushing attack did it all. Allen just needed to not screw things up or turn the ball over. He did that just fine, barely made an impact, and Buffalo still trounced the No. 2 team in my Power Rankings.
Now that's scary.
How many teams would you rather face right now than the Buffalo Bills?
If the answer is more than the 49ers, you might be kidding yourself.
These are the Buffalo Bills that were promised, a team good enough to win on offense or defense, by running or passing.
These Bills are Super Bowl contenders. This is the team nobody wants to play in the playoffs.
The question now is whether anyone will have to.
Buffalo needed at least one of these games against the Chiefs or Cowboys. They got both instead, and now they'll face Easton Stick and Bailey Zappe the next two weeks.
Barring a huge upset, that will take the Bills to 10-6. Per the New York Times playoff simulator, that would put Buffalo at 70% to make the postseason heading into an enormous game in Miami to close the season.
Win that, too, and Buffalo is in — maybe even as the division champ, potentially as high as the 2-seed.
Lose in Miami and Buffalo is still about 50-50 to make the playoffs now, after these two huge wins.
The Bills still have work to do, but they're a likely playoff team now.
And if Buffalo finds a way to add MVP Josh Allen on top of the awesome rushing attack and defense we saw on Sunday against the Cowboys, there's not a team in the NFL that wants to play the Bills in the postseason.
The Cowboys are who we thought they were.
Suddenly, it looks like the Bills might be who we thought they were now too — genuine Super Bowl contenders that can still win the whole thing.
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