Things were literally falling from the sky before the Dallas Cowboys lost another home game.
The roof at AT&T Stadium can be repaired, but the issues troubling the Cowboys this season, especially at home, might be harder to fix after their 34-10 loss to the Houston Texans on Monday night.
Dallas (3-7) is now 0-5 at home, marking their first winless home record since 1989, Jerry Jones’ first year owning the Cowboys. That season, they finished 1-15 and lost all eight of their home games at the old Texas Stadium. They’ve now lost six straight games at AT&T Stadium, including the playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers in January.
“It’s frustrating for everybody, frustrating for players, frustrated for coaches,” head coach Mike McCarthy said. “But we just have a lot of moving parts going on and we just have to be cleaner and more detailed in certain spots.”
Before the game, a piece of the stadium’s roof and some debris fell about 300 feet to the field while the retractable roof was being opened. This happened at least three hours before the game, and the stadium was mostly empty at the time. Luckily, no one was injured, and the roof was closed without any further issues.
Dallas’ franchise quarterback Dak Prescott, who is recovering from season-ending surgery on a torn hamstring, could only watch in frustration from the sidelines.
He was on crutches, and after punter Bryan Anger threw a pass on a fake play — which fell 5 yards short of the first down — Prescott put both hands on the back of his head, clearly disappointed.
Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb had eight catches for 93 yards, but had a tough moment in the third quarter. He dropped a pass and then committed an offensive interference penalty on a deep pass near the end zone.
In the same drive, kicker Brandon Aubrey, who had just missed a field goal before halftime — ending his perfect streak at home after 34 attempts — made a 64-yard field goal.
However, the Cowboys had to cancel out those points after a personal foul penalty gave Houston an automatic first down. On the next play, backup quarterback Cooper Rush threw an incomplete pass on fourth-and-2 from the Texans’ 8-yard line.
Dallas moved the ball well, finishing with 388 total yards, but it was their only trip into the red zone. In their previous two home games, the Cowboys had only managed to score five field goals.
“We were moving the ball up and down the field, but I feel like it’s been, I think all season is not getting in the red zone and not scoring,” Lamb said. “Obviously good teams do it, and we haven’t been able to do that, and it differentiates the score a lot.”
When Joe Mixon ran for his third touchdown to put Houston ahead 34-10 with 3:16 left, four Dallas defenders were called for unnecessary roughness on the same play. It marked the sixth consecutive home game in which the Cowboys trailed by more than 21 points.
The only other NFL teams to trail by three touchdowns in five games in a season were the 2020 Jacksonville Jaguars, 2008 Detroit Lions, and 1981 Baltimore Colts.
But the Cowboys are the only team to fall behind by at least 20 points in six straight home games, including playoffs, and the only team to do it in five regular-season games at home.
After winning the NFC East last season, the Cowboys are now five games behind the division-leading Philadelphia Eagles with just seven games left to play. Dallas will travel to Washington (7-4) on Sunday, while their next home game is against the New York Giants (2-8) on Thanksgiving Day.
In those six straight home losses, Dallas has led for only 2 minutes and 15 seconds. That brief lead came during a 47-9 loss to Detroit, the worst home loss under Jerry Jones, which happened on the owner’s 82nd birthday, October 13.
Before that, the Cowboys had won 16 straight games at AT&T Stadium over two seasons, a streak matched only by the New England Patriots since 2000.
