The wheels have come all the way off for the Dallas Cowboys. The back left one came undone against the Chicago Bears in Week 3. Front right? Well, it blew out on the highway against the Carolina Panthers in Week 6. The back right was left a mile high as the team fled their Week 8 game against the Denver Broncos with their tails between their legs. 

And the front left finally, perhaps mercifully, lost all of its tread in tonight’s Week 9 27-17 loss to the Arizona Cardinals, a game that wasn’t even as close as the final score indicated. And even more concerning than that, it seems that the offense, the engine that made this team go at all, is starting to sputter. 

Dak Prescott threw for an empty 250 yards and was sacked five times, the team turned it over three times and, perhaps most alarming of all, they stalled in the red zone twice after whiffing on two fourth down attempts inside the 20. 

The season is lost, the proverbial car needing to be sold parts as opposed to being added to. And that’s a perfectly fine path to take, one that comes for each team in their life cycles. 

Unfortunately, it seems like this cycle of contention is at its end. And while there are plenty of high-quality parts on this roster, almost none are on the defense. CeeDee, Pickens, Ferguson, whichever of the five offensive lineman that decides to play at a high level for any given game. They're all very useful players. 

But it’s clear that this team is less than the sum of parts and, with the offense starting to struggle as they’ve averaged less than 20 points the last two weeks after averaging over 30 the first seven games, it might be time to shift into sellers not just for the rest of this season, but next offseason as well. 

That is of course an unpopular take, and it’s easy to point to the defense as the root of all issues. It’s fair, too, as they’ve given up at least 27 points in all but two games this season while making the likes of Jacoby Brissett, Bryce Young, and 2025 Russell Wilson all look like high level quarterbacks.   

Therein lies the issue though, right? You can point to a laundry list of issues on the offense, but there’s also a litany of problems defensively. If there are that many issues, maybe this current group is simply unsalvageable. Maybe it’s time to truly strip this clunker for picks and hope that a new transmission can stop this franchise from slipping gears from drive to reverse each week. 

It’s a conversation no one wants to have, and that’s fair. Cowboy fans have been put through the car wash and are eager to come out the other side with a clean coat of hope. 

But with the all the repairs and picks that have been poured into this team, the team shouldn’t be this underwhelming, and it’s bringing an unpleasant set of questions closer to the surface: is this a team that can be fixed in one offseason and, if not, should any of the parts be off limits?