There's a host of issues plaguing the Cowboys in 2025, but one stands above all.
The Dallas Cowboys in 2025 were a hard watch.
From a prolific offense led by Dak Prescott that averaged 27 points per game, to a defense that gave up 30+ points nine times, the Cowboys were stuck in the middle. ...
Making their 7-8-1 record quite appropriate.
An offense that, when rolling, can beat anyone, but a defense so bad meant that Dallas could lose to anyone. That is a tough place to live.
But what it also did was put more pressure on the offense to be perfect.
We have spoken at length all season that Dak and Co. needed to be perfect for the team to win because the defense can't stop anyone.
In five of their last six games, the Cowboys gave up at least 34 points. Yuck.
So, did Dak feel any extra pressure to put points on the board, knowing the opposing offense was going to hang 30 every week?
"I put pressure on myself, honestly, to score 30 points a game, and I think this offense does,” Prescott said. “It's unfortunate we're giving up that much, and that did make it a little harder. But we have to stop that. We've got to stop giving up 30 points a game. That'll be, I'm sure, the vocal and the main focus of this offseason."
But let's be clear here, Dallas' issues were not just all on the defense.
The offense at times sputtered, too.
Prior to Week 18, the Cowboys had scored just 15 second-half points in their previous three games.
That won't cut it. And four times Dallas failed to score 20 points in a game, and ironically, it was 0-4.
Still, Prescott knows that even when the defense is struggling, the offense has to do its job to help them out.
“There's going to be games even when we make adjustments or whatever, and we're stopping teams holding them to much less than that half of that," Prescott added. "There's still going to be a game where teams score 30, 40 points that we've got to go hold our own and play complementary football. So, we've got to stop that.”
So, there is more than enough blame to go around. But when both sides of the ball are playing well, we have seen what type of team they can become -- and what teams they are capable of beating (Eagles and Chiefs).
For the new (we think/hope) defensive coordinator, the first port of call is to figure out how to stop allowing 30 points every week, because when they don't, Dallas was 6-2 this season.
The formula, it appears, is clear. Just don't allow 30 points and with this offense, the Cowboys will win a lot of games in 2026.