Even if the anticipated outcome Sunday night for Micah Parsons’ return to AT&T Stadium is the same as the Packers’ recent playoff visit — a Green Bay blowout after the 2023 season — it’s the circumstances that have changed that matter most. It sounds strange, but forget the result and look at the point spreads.
The Packers are a seven-point favorite here Sunday night, according to most sportsbooks. The Cowboys are the biggest home underdog in the NFL this week. The winless Giants are given a slightly better chance (plus-6.5) against the undefeated LA Chargers than the Cowboys have been granted by the oddsmakers.
Rewind to January 2024. Dak Prescott is talking just days before the Green Bay playoff game about the significance of all of his Louis Vuitton bags and luggage. It’s all about the LV, he explains, since the Super Bowl is in Las Vegas. Parsons is talking about the possible loss of coordinator Dan Quinn (he will leave sooner that anticipated for Washington) and says, “It could possibly be my last ride with Q, and if it is, we’re gonna make sure it’s a damn good one.”
It would be 27-0 in the second quarter before Dallas got on the board. It would be 48-16 early in the fourth quarter before Jordan Love stopped throwing to wide open receivers.
Cowboys
And it’s the game that changed everything for the losers. A team that had won 16 straight home games would lose seven times at AT&T Stadium in the 2024 season including some enormous defeats — 24 points to Houston, 25 to New Orleans, 28 to the Eagles, 38 to Detroit.
Now the whole thing has been flipped. You don’t go from seven-point favorites to seven-point underdogs against the same team in just over a year simply by trading Parsons (although that clearly plays a role). No one in Cowboys’ management saw the downfall that the Packers playoff game signaled. The warning signs were ignored. Mike McCarthy was kept for another season, the club did its usual bargain basement shopping in free agency and the roster got worse. A 7-10 season sent McCarthy packing, but, instead of searching the pro and college ranks for the absolute best coaching staff the Cowboys could find (and they could afford them all), they cast their lot with a first-time head coach alongside a defensive coordinator coming off a disastrous stop as a head coach in Chicago.
More bargain basement shopping in free agency, even if it included some former No. 1 picks, followed. The Cowboys convinced themselves that, for one, cornerback Kaiir Elam, a Buffalo first-round pick in 2022, could plug a hole left by Jourdan Lewis or by Daron Bland’s injury. Hasn’t gone that way. They did trade for George Pickens, an out-of-character move that was worth the roll of the dice, and his big play potential will be tested as the club plays without CeeDee Lamb again Sunday night.
After three consecutive 12-win seasons, the Cowboys have almost willed themselves into the heavy underdog role. The Parsons trade only made sense because of the manner in which Jerry Jones had misread and mishandled a negotiation, the likes of which he has been dealing with for 35 years. Now a repeat of last year’s 7-10 record is perhaps the ceiling for this club. It’s hard to find the automatic wins on the schedule after the Cowboys needed overtime and a Russell Wilson interception following 450 yards worth of completions to collect their only win of the season.
The Jets on deck? They had the unbeaten Bucs on the ropes in the final minute at Tampa Bay last week. Carolina the week after? The Panthers just beat the Falcons, 30-0, and I don’t know how any team that can roll up that score qualifies as an automatic loser to the Cowboys.
But for now it’s Parsons and the Packers, even though I think Love and the Green Bay passing game are the real potential horror show for Dallas fans. Love went nine straight games without an interception before getting picked by the Browns last week. Dallas’ defense has one takeaway for the season. I don’t know what the over/under is on Green Bay punts Sunday night, but if it’s more than 2.5, jump on that under.
It’s the other line that tells the story, though. Dallas was the second biggest favorite in the opening week of the playoffs the last time Green Bay was here. Only Buffalo, at home against third-place Denver, was a more solid favorite. And yet the Cowboys were the only one of six home teams to lose that weekend.
They have never recovered from that game in any sense. The flaws that evidenced themselves that afternoon have grown in magnitude. To become more proficient at stopping the run, they have become the league’s worst against the pass. The confidence of winning at home completely disappeared. And now injuries and a reckless Parsons trade have thrust Dallas into an underdog role that the club is unlikely to shed the rest of this season.
Save for the Parsons deal, the Packers have not really changed their identity one bit since that playoff game. Simply by holding steady, they have made a 14-point swap in betting line expectations (7-point underdog to 7-point favorite) by letting Dallas flounder its way down toward the bottom of the NFC.
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Aikman shared his thoughts on the trades just a few days before Parsons faces the Cowboys at AT&T Stadium.
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Cowboys’ Dak Prescott is focused on task at hand, says Week 4 isn’t about ‘Dak vs. Micah’
Prescott said he doubts Sunday’s game will bring closure to the summerlong drama between Dallas and Parsons.
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