Dak Prescott said the quiet part out loud after the Dallas Cowboys’ 24-16 loss to Tampa Bay: “We were supposed to win.”
That expectation hung over the game from the start, and it made the second half sting even more. Dallas led by three at halftime, but the Buccaneers came out of the break and scored 17 points in the third quarter alone, turning a game the Cowboys thought they should control into a loss that dropped them to 2-3.
Prescott finished 24 of 32 for 316 yards and a touchdown, with 130 of those yards going to George Pickens on nine catches. But Dallas also turned it over three times — two interceptions and a fumble — and those mistakes kept piling up against a Tampa Bay team that did not need many chances to seize the game.
The Cowboys opened with a one-yard Javonte Williams touchdown run and had moments that suggested the night could go the way they expected. Williams later broke off Dallas’s first big play, bouncing a carry left and sprinting 21 yards to the Buccaneers’ 29. But the offense never fully separated, and the defense could not hold once Tampa Bay found its rhythm.
That shift came fast after halftime.
Tampa Bay, which had deferred the opening kickoff, used the third quarter to take control. The Buccaneers scored on their first three possessions of the second half, and after Dallas failed to convert a fourth-and-3 late in the third quarter, Tampa Bay got the ball back in Cowboys territory to start the final period. From there, the Buccaneers kept pressing until the game was out of Dallas’s hands.
The numbers told the same story. Tampa Bay outgained Dallas 419-366 and controlled possession for 39:21 to 20:39. The Buccaneers also ran for 241 yards, led by Bucky Irving’s 165 on 21 carries. Irving’s 72-yard run was the longest of his career and the longest by a Buccaneer since Ronald Jones II’s 98-yarder in Week 10 of the 2020 season.
Dallas, meanwhile, never solved Tampa Bay’s plan on either side of the ball. The Cowboys were held to 50 rushing yards on 13 attempts, and CeeDee Lamb was limited to nine yards on two receptions. Prescott’s two interceptions were especially costly, including Alex Anzalone’s pick with 1:22 left that sealed Tampa Bay’s first win of the season.
Jerry Jones did not hide his reaction afterward.
“Extraordinarily, extraordinarily disappointed,” the Cowboys owner said, summing up a loss that felt bigger than one bad night. Dallas has now allowed 20 or more points in 12 straight games, matching a team record, and the defense’s problems were impossible to ignore again after Tampa Bay’s third-quarter surge.
For the Buccaneers, the win ended a stretch of four straight one-possession losses and kept them in the thick of the NFC South race. For Dallas, it left a different kind of test: 10 days to absorb a game it believed it should have won, then turn quickly to a road trip to Green Bay on Oct. 18.