The Dallas Cowboys earned a tough win over the struggling Houston Texans this past week to reach 2-2 on the season. For Colin Cowherd, that was apparently enough to consider them a top-10 team as we reach the quarter mark of this season.
On Tuesday’s edition of The Herd, Cowherd did his weekly “Herd Hierarchy” of NFL teams and prefaced it by saying that he isn’t sure there currently are 10 teams that really qualify for “top” right now. Nevertheless, he made a case that the Cowboys are a top-10 team on the strength of their offense, particularly the connection between QB Dak Prescott and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb.
“Listen I don’t like their coaching staff, but I’ll put the Dallas Cowboys in there (at 10). They gave up 7.6 yards a play to Houston, but I’ll say this: Dak, pass protection, Javonte Williams, CeeDee Lamb… when Dak is targeting CeeDee Lamb this year he completes 80-percent of his throws with a passer rating of 141. So it’s a very lopsided football team. They don’t make enough stops, they get gashed, but just based on this offense, I’m gonna put Dallas at No. 10.”
Are they a top 10 team?
Cowherd is certainly right on the money as far as Dallas’ offense goes. The team currently ranks second in the league with 122 points. Only the Buffalo Bills have more and the difference is only five points.
It’s not exactly one of the more balanced offenses though. The team is top-10 in all passing categories but in the bottom half for attempts, yards and yards per attempt. Simply put, the passing attack is doing all of the work.
As far as the defense goes, it’s almost indistinguishable from the unit that cost them so many games last year. They’ve given up 112 points – 5th most in the league and rank 30th in yards allowed.
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The problem that should really worry Cowboys fans is that the team is statistically on track to be almost exactly the same as they were last year – and last year they went 7-9-1 and missed the playoffs for a second straight season.
Something has to give soon. Either the defense needs to step up or the running game needs to take off some of the load from Dak Prescott. If they don’t, things could get very ugly the moment Dak or one of his top two receivers suffers even the slightest injury.
