Dallas has scored 29 points combined over its last two games. Twenty-nine. With a healthy roster. With the kind of skill-position talent most front offices would trade a first for. That's not a slump, that's a tell, and Brian Schottenheimer said the quiet part out loud this week when he called the offense "a little bit one-sided" and said it needs balance.
That phrase matters more than the box score. Injuries are a known variable, the market prices them fast and moves on. A coordinator admitting his own scheme is lopsided, with no excuses available because nobody's hurt, is a different animal. It's a signal the dysfunction is structural, not situational, and structural problems don't fix themselves in a bye week.
The Cowboys are 2-4. They lost 23-13 to Green Bay on Sunday Night Football, a game where a defense that struggled all year to get off the field suddenly got timely stops and takeaways against a Dallas offense that couldn't answer. Here's the stretch in full.
how bad has the Cowboys offense been
| Game | Cowboys Points |
|---|---|
| vs. Packers | 13 |
| previous game | 16 |
| two-game total | 29 |
Fourteen and a half points a game from a unit that was drawing playoff-offense projections this summer. That's the number that should have Dallas's season win total future drifting further from wherever the preseason market had it, and it's the number that should have team-total posts for Dallas's coming games sitting lower than the roster on paper would suggest.
I don't have the specific play-calling splits in front of me, so I'm not going to pretend I know whether "one-sided" means too much Dak in empty sets or not enough ground game to keep a defense honest. Schottenheimer didn't spell it out beyond the word "balance," and I'm not going to launder a vague quote into a specific mechanism I can't see. What I can tell you is this: when the guy calling the plays says the attack is lopsided, the fix usually takes weeks, not a single Monday walkthrough. That's the part the market should respect before it respects the names on the roster.
what this means for Dallas's win total and team totals going forward
A 2-4 team with a top-shelf, fully healthy offense that can't crack 15 points a game isn't a buy-low spot yet. It's a wait-and-see spot. The thing that would actually confirm a real line move is a full game plan shift, more two-back sets, more play-action off a run that's actually working, something tangible in the next box score rather than another quote about intent. Until that shows up on paper, this reads as a fade on the public nostalgia for this roster, not a number to chase.
Sharp money tends to respect coach-speak less than box scores, and right now the box score is doing the talking. Twenty-nine points over two weeks against a schedule that isn't exactly the '85 Bears is the kind of sample that moves a season total even if it never moves a single week's line.
what I'm watching next
The first full game after this admission. If the run-pass split actually changes and the scoring climbs back toward what this roster is built to produce, the under conversation on Dallas's remaining totals gets a lot less interesting fast. If it doesn't, the 2-4 start starts looking less like a pothole and more like the record.