With most of Week 9 in the books, the NFL has officially hit the halfway point of the regular season. The league has played 137 of the 272 scheduled games for the 2024 season. If you feel like you can't name more than a handful of teams you trust to be good on a weekly basis, well, you're not the only one.
It might be easier to spot the teams that haven't lived up to expectations, and they each had bad days in Week 9. While the Jets pulled out a victory over the Texans on Thursday night, six teams that have losing records in 2024 after posting winning records last season all lost in frustrating fashion Sunday.
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I'm going to spare the 4-5 Seahawks, who are still in the thick of the NFC West hunt, and the 2-6 Dolphins, since it's easy to chalk up most of their subpar season to the absence of Tua Tagovailoa, even given that they have lost both of his starts since the quarterback returned to the field. Instead, I'll focus on four other disappointing teams. What went wrong for them Sunday? Has it been a problem all season? Is there any hope or evidence they can fix it before the end of the season? And will those issues lead to changes during the offseason?
There's only one place to start that conversation, and it's in Dallas, where the Cowboys are quickly fading out of the NFC playoff picture:
Jump to a disappointing team:
Browns | Cowboys
Jaguars | Saints
Dallas Cowboys (3-5)
Week 9 result: Lost to Atlanta 27-21
While the final score might hint at a close game, the six-point margin dramatically overstates how well Dallas played. Its offense converted just one of its first nine third-down attempts. It failed on two fourth-down attempts, including a fake punt, and wasn't able to attempt a third because it had 12 men on the field. It trailed by two scores for significant portions of the second half before a late touchdown pass from Cooper Rush to Jalen Tolbert made things look close and a failed onside kick ended the game.
Rush was in the game because the Cowboys had lost quarterback Dak Prescott to a hamstring issue. Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, the other big contract inked during team owner Jerry Jones' "all-in" offseason, suffered a shoulder injury late in the game, although he was able to return before the game ended. If you thought the Cowboys' offense was struggling with Prescott and Lamb, imagine what it would look like without those two pillars.
The most damning thing to say about the Cowboys is that the offensive identity they've had since the Bill Parcells era has been broken. For whatever issues they've had over the past two decades, when their offensive line has been healthy, they've been able to rely on the line as the building block for the entire attack.