The two NFL teams from Texas have combined for just one win in the past month.
However, that doesn’t mean they are facing the same challenges as they prepare for their seventh meeting, a series that started 22 years ago when Houston won its first-ever game against Dallas. In fact, the situations are far from the same.
C.J. Stroud and the Texans are in a much stronger position than the Cowboys, even though Stroud is going through what may be his toughest four-game stretch as a pro.
Houston (6-4) is still in first place in the AFC South, despite a recent 1-3 slump, while the Cowboys (3-6) are on a four-game losing streak and are in real danger of missing the playoffs after making it for three years in a row. They’ve already lost more games this season than they did in each of their last three 12-5 seasons.
To make matters worse for Dallas, they are coming off a poor offensive performance in the first game without Dak Prescott, their franchise quarterback, who recently had season-ending surgery for a torn hamstring.
Playing at home on Monday night doesn’t offer much hope for the Cowboys. The defending NFC East champions are 0-4 at AT&T Stadium this season, after winning 16 straight games there. Their last home game ended in a blowout loss to Green Bay in the wild-card playoffs last January.
Three of the Cowboys’ four home losses this season have been blowouts, including a 34-6 defeat to division rival Philadelphia last week. The other loss was also not as close as the score suggested.
Head coach Mike McCarthy, whose future in Dallas is uncertain as he enters the final year of his contract, sees this as a big opportunity for his team to fight through adversity.
“I think this is an incredible opportunity for this football team, what’s in front of us, to be into this valley of adversity,” McCarthy said. “And I think to come out of this would be a great story. There’s a ton of work. And the only work we’re really focused on is beating the Houston Texans.”
The Texans, on the other hand, are coming off back-to-back losses for the second time in C.J. Stroud’s two seasons. The first time was during his 0-2 start as a rookie. Last week, Houston lost to Detroit 26-23, despite intercepting Jared Goff five times.
Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans said, “We’re going through a tough patch right now. But, as I told our team, we need that. We need to toughen up. We need to be mentally tougher. We need to figure out ways to finish games, and the only way to learn sometimes is through failure.”
Stroud has struggled in his last four games, with a passer rating under 100 in each of them. He has only two touchdowns and two interceptions in that span. His longest stretch with a sub-100 passer rating during his rookie season was three games.
“I am not only a game-manager, but I can also be a game-changer,” Stroud said. “Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t.
For me, I am going to keep the swag, and kind of like what I told you all last year, Steph Curry can go 0 for whatever, but he is going to keep shooting. That’s me. I am going to keep shooting.”
