DALLAS — Picks or Pickens, make your … selection.
If the Cowboys are going to win this rare Thursday night home game as comfortably as the sports books are suggesting (8.5-point favorites?), then one of two things is going to have to happen. Either the long, dry spell of interception-free football comes to an end for the Dallas defense, or George Pickens returns to 2025 form and makes the Cowboys a dual threat at wide receiver for the first time this season.
Let’s put Pickens on ice for the moment (as coach Brian Schottenheimer and Dak Prescott did Sunday in Houston, offering up 21 targets to CeeDee Lamb to three for Pickens). This game is more likely about the Dallas defense, and a rare opportunity for the unit to shine for roughly the first time since Dan Quinn fled to Washington (or certainly since Micah Parsons was shipped to Green Bay).
Instead of Baker Mayfield, who threw for 303 yards on 72% completions on his last visit here in 2024, the Cowboys face rookie Jalon Daniels of Kansas. Not to be confused with Jayden Daniels of Washington, who was the second overall pick coming out of LSU in 2024. This Daniels, after six seasons as a Jayhawk — four as a captain, he must have been beloved in Lawrence — went undrafted last spring. This Daniels threw three interceptions against Utah in his last college start.
And this Daniels was picked twice by Green Bay on Sunday in his first NFL start, a 17-14 loss. It was Tampa Bay’s fourth defeat this season, establishing that Todd Bowles’ seat is now the hottest in the league, and he’s riding an untested rookie who looked much better running (55 yards) than throwing (148 yards on 27 attempts) against the Packers.
If this isn’t the ultimate “Get Out of Jail Free’’ card being handed to Christian Parker and the Dallas defense, then one simply doesn’t exist. Their running threat is Bucky Irving, who falls into the decent category (although against Dallas that can frequently be upgraded to "significant force" category). Mike Evans, their best receiver for many years, is a 49er now. Chris Godwin Jr. is 30, and his last 1,000 yard-5 TD season was in 2021. Their best wideout is supposed to be last year’s rookie threat, Emeka Egbuka, but after two catches for 13 yards last week, there are no indications that KU’s finest knows how to find him.
The Cowboys meanwhile have gone seven games without intercepting a pass. It’s a puzzling run of futility since they haven’t faced much in the way of decorated passers beyond the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson in the stretch. Washington’s Daniels played just two of the eight quarters this streak covers. I don’t know that Joey Porter Jr. is here specifically to rob opposing passers, given that he has produced just one interception each of the last three years as a Steeler. He’s more about shutting down receivers, which would be good enough, given how this defense just breathed life into the arm of Houston’s C.J. Stroud and it nearly cost the Cowboys another game.
But surely against Daniels they will find the path to an interception, maybe even a couple of takeaways. That feels like asking a lot against anyone other than a rookie who was viewed as unsuitable for the seventh round last April.
As for Pickens, it’s hard to say exactly where he has gone after enjoying his finest pro season here in 2025. It’s not like Lamb missed the entirety of last season, it was only four games. The two worked well in tandem. And Pickens’ career has been all about his skills as a deep threat. He showed that with a 53-yard reception on one of his two catches in Houston. I don’t like to play the “take away this” game, but if you remove that 53-yarder from the equation, Pickens has 17 catches for 172 yards (10.1 average). Even with it his average is 12.5.
Pickens was averaging 16.0 yards per catch entering the season. That’s with a host of bad quarterbacks in Pittsburgh trying to find him with the football before he joined forces with Dak. It’s not like the Dallas offense is suffering mightily without Pickens producing the numbers that got him a $27.3 contract as a franchise tagged player this season. But at some point, especially for a team that has struggled to reproduce last year’s rushing numbers without Tyler Smith, now expected back at guard, some versatility can go a long way in giving Dak the chance to keep posting 30-point nights and winning games.
Pickens has the track record that says he can go out and produce Thursday night against Tampa Bay. Can’t say the same about the defense, only that the opportunity against a winless team with an untried backup quarterback in charge is right there on the table.
Deliver on either front, and Schottenheimer can own his second winning record as a Cowboys head coach, first since a Thanksgiving Day win over the Chiefs vaulted this team to 6-5-1. That winning mark vanished in a hurry. Given that we are much earlier in the current season, who’s to say a winning record couldn’t hang around for awhile if the Cowboys can only get there?