The NFL released the full schedule for 2024 on Wednesday night, and the Dallas Cowboys are tied with the Jets and the Chiefs for the most in the league, with six.
As the Cowboys look to be the first team to repeat as NFC East Champions since 2004, looking at it on the surface, the Cowboys will be lucky to win 10 games this year.
Prime-time
The prime-time games that the Cowboys play this year start week 4 against the Giants on Thursday night.
Let’s just start by saying if they aren’t careful they very well could be under .500 in these 6 games this season.
They follow that up with a Sunday Night game at Pittsburgh in week five. Following their bye in week 7, they will go on the road to face the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday Night football.
Of course, they are on the road against them again. They never play them at home. That is a loss.
After the 49ers game in week 8, the next prime-time game will take place in week 11 against the Houston Texans at home on Monday Night football. They will probably lose that game.
By that time we should have a solid understanding of who this football team is.
Week 14 at home against the Bengals will be their fifth prime-time game of the season, will Joe Burrow hold up until then? We will see, but that game is again on Monday Night.
The final prime-time game they have is at home against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday Night football.
If the Cowboys don’t have a chance at the NFC East crown, that game could be huge for playoff seeding.
That is a HUGE if, I honestly have no idea how this season will go. It is so hard to tell. I am leaning toward them not being good though.
The Bucs will likely be competing for one of the last wild card spots like Dallas. The Cowboys will need to take care of business and get that win over Baker Mayfield.
The Good & Bad?
The good about the Cowboy’s schedule this season is that they get most of their tougher games at home.
Ravens, Lions, Texans, Bengals Tampa, all of these games are at home. So although we can say whatever we’d like about Dak Prescott and the others, they have an advantage there. Will they win? That remains to be seen.
What I don’t like is the week 7 bye. I am not a fan of early bye weeks.
They play 6 games and then get the break, which means they have 11 games after the bye, yikes. I would rather have a bye week around week 11.
This team is either going to be competing for the last wild card spot, or they very well could be running into the ground by Thanksgiving and fire everyone.
Jerry Jones did not do enough to improve this offseason.
He has yet to sign Micah Parsons or CeeDee Lamb to a contract extension and will let Dak Prescott play the final year of his deal, not a good idea.
As Jerry sits here others are getting paid. That only raises the price for Lamb, Parsons, and Prescott.
We just saw what Jared Goff got.
We may see a completely different team a season from now, or they could run it back all with new contracts.
I thought both Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott should have gotten the boot after the choke last season, but here we go again. Let’s see how 2024 goes and then we can revisit this. Nothing we can do about it now.
I hope this team makes the playoffs as a fan, but as someone who has seen enough, I hope they lose like 11 games so we can build around Lamb and Parsons.
