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The Football Notebook: Arch Manning’s Comeback, the Cowboys’ Reality Check and Manchester United’s VAR Nightmare
Welcome to The Football Notebook, the place where I spend approximately 48 consecutive hours watching football and then somehow have the audacity to complain that the weekend went by too fast. I’m beginning to think there might be a correlation there, but further research is needed.
There is always some level of Cowboys hype before the season, even when everybody involved knows deep down that the team probably isn’t going anywhere. The national media contributes its usual share, while the local ecosystem eventually produces some variation of the idea that this is finally the year everything changes. Most of the time I can recognize what’s happening and proceed with the appropriate level of skepticism. This offseason was different.
I believed it.
There was almost no drama surrounding the Cowboys, which itself felt like a minor miracle after spending decades with Jerry Jones operating the franchise like a reality television producer. Brian Schottenheimer’s offense had been genuinely good in his first season, and Christian Parker seemed like an inspired choice to repair a defense that had been a complete disaster in 2025. He came from Philadelphia and had worked under Vic Fangio. Surely if the defense could improve even a little, Dallas would have something.
That was the theory, anyway.
Then the Cowboys went to MetLife Stadium and allowed the Giants to grind them into a fine powder.
New York converted nine of its 11 third downs and finished with 394 yards, with 165 coming on the ground. The Giants possessed the football for more than 36 minutes, and the second half became especially painful because Dallas’ offense barely got to participate in the game. The Cowboys had two possessions after halftime. They scored on both of them and still lost 28-20 because their defense apparently had somewhere else to be.
Parker looked over his skis, which isn’t a declaration that he’s incapable of becoming a good defensive coordinator. He’s young and this was his first regular season game running the show, so there are going to be days where the learning curve becomes obvious. I just didn’t expect the first lesson to involve the Giants converting third downs with the reliability of Steph Curry at the free throw line.
The frustrating part is that this was exactly what Dallas supposedly fixed. Caleb Downs was supposed to help transform the secondary, Von Miller was brought in and Parker’s arrival gave everyone reason to believe that last year’s defensive catastrophe wasn’t going to repeat itself. One game doesn’t erase any of that, but it certainly wasn’t the opening argument I wanted to hear.
I’m not writing off the Cowboys after Week 1 because doing that with any NFL team is a pretty good way to make yourself look stupid by October. Weird things happen during the opening weekend, and plenty of eventual contenders have started seasons looking considerably worse than Dallas did Sunday night. But the entire reason I allowed myself to buy into this team was the belief that the defense would no longer require Dak Prescott and the offense to be nearly perfect.
Football is back! Some things never change.