The Cowboys opened their Thanksgiving Day game against the Bills with a touchdown and then saw the Bills rattle off 26 straight points on their way to a 26-15 win.
Dallas faced the Bears this Thursday, but things played out in a similar manner. The Cowboys opened the game with an Ezekiel Elliott touchdown, but were down 24-7 by the time they got back into the end zone in the fourth quarter. They’d wind up losing 31-24 to fall to 6-7 on the season.
After the game, quarterback Dak Prescott said he didn’t see the Bears make major adjustments after the first drive of the game and couldn’t specify why the team can’t keep the momentum going after their quick starts.
“Can’t put a finger on it,” Prescott said, via the team’s website. “Wish I could right now. If I could, obviously we wouldn’t be in this situation. We’d be getting over this and out of this slump. But that’s the most frustrating part is we have the skill level, we have the players, we have the chemistry at times. But we’re not playing together as a team complementary enough when we need to, and we’ve got to figure out what it is.”
The Cowboys had one promising drive between their touchdowns, but it stalled when fullback Jamize Olawale didn’t see a pass from Prescott on third down. The quarterback chalked that up to miscommunication with a player stepping into a bigger role with Tony Pollard out and Brett Maher missed a field goal on the next play to keep the Cowboys off the scoreboard.
That’s one example of how things went wrong for the Cowboys, but it doesn’t explain the four three-and-outs that also kept the Cowboys from scoring points until it was too late and that leaves them with plenty of work to do ahead of Week 15.
