​Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer holds the mouthpiece of his headsets and watches an injury timeout at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026. (Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News)
ARLINGTON — The Cowboys lost a game on Thursday they believe they should’ve won. Head coach Brian Schottenheimer told them before the game that great teams stack wins and go on streaks, and yet, the only thing the Cowboys have stacked of late is this feeling of déjà vu.“It’s frustrating,” Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said after the team’s 24-16 loss to the previously winless Buccaneers. “I feel like this game was similar to the Cardinals game last year, and then I feel like I can probably pick another one from the year before.”And another. And another. And another. Because when it comes to the Cowboys, missed chances, and opportunities evaded, have become the recent standard. They’ve won enough to stay in the conversation, but lost enough to stay in a frustrating, middling purgatory.“OK,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said as he walked to a gaggle of reporters after the loss, “extraordinarily, extraordinarily disappointed. You really need to get it done when it’s there to take.”The Buccaneers on Thursday were ripe for it. They came to AT&T Stadium without a win. They had multiple key injuries, including to starting quarterback Baker Mayfield. That left the Buccaneers with rookie undrafted quarterback Jalon Daniels, whom the Cowboys scouted this offseason. “We’d like [to make]life difficult on him,” Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer told 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) before the game about their plan for defending Daniels. “He’s a young quarterback that’s got a lot of ability and talent, but he is a rookie.”Instead, it was Daniels who made life difficult on the Cowboys. The rookie finished 19-of-25 for 189 yards and a touchdown. Schottenheimer said earlier in the week that the Cowboys couldn’t allow quarterbacks to continue with high passer ratings against them. Daniels finished with a rating of 110.2, becoming the latest surprise quarterback to have an exceptional day against the Cowboys defense, just as Russell Wilson, J.J. McCarthy, Jacoby Brissett and more have done over the last two years.That’s, perhaps, where the biggest déjà vu feeling is sparked. The Cowboys hoped this year’s defense would be different from last year. At the least, it couldn’t get worse from being the worst in the league like it was under Matt Eberflus, right? Through five games, it feels eerily similar. The Cowboys entered the week with the 31st-ranked defense in the NFL, in terms of EPA (Extra Points Added) per play allowed. The performance against Tampa Bay shouldn’t do too much to change that.“We are still, in my mind, right where we started, relative to our defense,” Jones said.Jones preached patience about the development of this defense earlier in the season. He compared the massive overhaul