'Blurry' Cowboys 'Hit In The Mouth' - And Trolled By Lions

Once again, at home, the Dallas Cowboys were rocked by an early punch and never recovered in a 47-9 loss to the Detroit Lions at AT&T Stadium.

While it was owner Jerry Jones' birthday, there were no celebrations going on once the game began as the Cowboys had the brakes beat off them by a Lions juggernaut hell-bent on making an example of Dallas after last year's now infamous game.

The Cowboys got on the board first with a Brandon Aubrey field goal, but the Lions struck back straight away with a touchdown. Dallas' next two possessions ended with an interception and a punt, whereas the Lions, of course, scored 10 unanswered points.

For receiver CeeDee Lamb, Dallas took a shot early and never recovered.

“We obviously got hit in the mouth, and it’s terrible, we got to dwell on it going into the bye week,” Lamb said.” “We got to come back ready to work, ready to get the fundamentals down. Granted, we are professional athletes, but there’s some things that we got to clean up, and being fundamental and playing football for what it is, is one of those things.”

The Cowboys got "hit in the mouth'' in another most unusual way as well.

Late in the day, AT&T Stadium's Twitter account boasted that 93,644 people attended the same, and did so by showing a jumbotron photo of the action - but with the score blurred out.

Detroit’s official X account reposted the announcement with the jab, “Is it us or is the scoreboard a little blurry?”

Cowboys critics might argue that the incident is "on-brand'': "Hey, who cares about the score? At least everybody's paying attention to 'America's Team!''

Both sides of the ball were humbled. The defense gave up 493 yards of total offense, including 184 on the ground, while the offense had five turnovers and just 251 yards of total offense and didn't score a touchdown.

It is going to be a long couple of weeks for the Cowboys as the postmortem takes shape, but even at 3-3, the season feels like it's teetering on the edge.

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Whatever Dallas finds in its across-the-hall meetings (defense meets with offense and vice versa) needs to be put into practice because the San Francisco 49ers are up next after the bye.

Lamb is right; Dallas got punched in the mouth, and that is becoming a worrisome theme of 2024. But perhaps more concerning than that are two things: 1) The Cowboys' inability to punch back, and 2) The ingrained organization commitment to sales, marketing and promotion of everything - except maybe the score.