Houston Texans Embarrass Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football

There were a lot of embarrassing things that happened inside AT&T Stadium in the Dallas metroplex over the last few days. There was the "fight" between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, there was the failure of Netflix to cover that event, then a piece of the roof fell off, and eventually...the Dallas Cowboys got trucked by the Houston Texans.

On Monday Night Football, in front of a nationwide audience, the Dallas Cowboys could only muster a single touchdown as they were beat 34-10 by the Houston Texans. At home...at their $1 billon stadium.

Sure, the Cowboys are without their starting quarterback Dak Prescott, who is done for the year after having to have hamstring surgery. But there have been multiple teams in the NFL who have looked like quality teams with a backup in (think Green Bay and Pittsburgh) that have won games this season.

Its not just that Cowboys quarterback Cooper Rush was bad either, he threw for over 350 yards in the game. Its just that the offense as a whole was a failure.

Honestly, most Cowboys fans will even admit that the offense didn't look much better when Dak was healthy. The fact that the team didn't pursue quality offensive free agents in the offseason will haunt them for a long time. Watching running back Derrick Henry lobby to be a Cowboy, only to have the team push him away will hurt every time Henry runs for 100 yards in a game this year (its happened 5 times already this year, including a 199 yard game against Buffalo). Henry has over 1,100 rushing yards in 11 games this season...while for Dallas, Rico Dowdle has 402 rushing yards this year, Ezekiel Elliott has 179 rushing yards, and Deuce Vaughn has 33 rushing yards. That's 614 rushing yards between 3 Dallas running backs.

Dallas Head Coach Mike McCarthy is supposed to be an offensive genius. However, he got that narrative while coaching Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay...one of the best quarterbacks in a generation. So maybe McCarthy isn't as much of a genius as we were led to believe.

But lets not put this all on the offense...Dallas' defense couldn't stop a cold on Monday Night Football.

Houston running back Joe Mixon rushed for 109 yards and 3 touchdowns, including a 45 yard touchdown run. Texans' quarterback C.J. Stroud threw for 257 yards with no touchdowns and an interception. The receiving yards were pretty evenly spread, with Nico Collins and Tank Dell each catching 4 passes for 54 yards. Dalton Shultz caught 5 passes for 33 yards, John Metchie III grabbed three passes for 33 yards, and Joe Mixon added 2 catches for 44 yards. That gave Mixon 153 yards of total offense in the game.

The Texans also got a big boost from their defense. Jalen Pitre and Derek Barnett connected for an impressive strip-sack-fumble-recovery-forced-fumble touchdown in the second half that really iced the game for Houston. Barnett hit Cowboys QB Cooper Rush, who fumbled the ball up in the air, it came down to an offensive lineman who started running up field with it, then Pitre smashed the lineman, forcing another fumble, which was picked up by Barnett (who started the whole thing) and he ran it in for the score.

Beyond that, former LSU players were having a night on the defense for Houston.

Former LSU stars Danielle Hunter, Derek Stingley Jr, and Devin White all contributed for the Texans. Hunter had 3 tackles and 2 sacks, White had 4 tackles, and Stingley Jr made two tackles while also grabbing an interception.

Things don't get much easier for Dallas now, they have to go to Washington to play star rookie Jayden Daniels and former Dallas Defensive Coordinator Dan Quinn. Then they have the traditional Thanksgiving game, which might actually be one of the few bright spots left on their schedule. Because they host the New York Giants on Thanksgiving, and the Giants have just benched their starting quarterback Daniel Jones in favor of backup Tommy DeVito.

Their Thanksgiving matchup might be the only thing the Cowboys are thankful for this year.