FRISCO, Texas – Through the first four years of the Mike McCarthy era, the Dallas Cowboys were one of the best teams in the league in turnover ratio, finishing amongst the top six in the category over the last three years. But in 2024, Dallas has the third worst margin in the NFL at -8, and are struggling to convert on their opportunities.
"We executed takeaways at a higher level the last three years, but our opportunities are not far off of the last couple years," McCarthy said. "So we're getting there, but we're not converting."
From 2021 through 2023, the Cowboys were a combined +34 in the turnover margin, a staple in Dallas' identity as a football team. Part of the contributing factor to the negative slide in 2024 has been Dak Prescott's early struggles, who has thrown multiple interceptions in three straight games, and four of the seven games he's played this season.
In terms of whether or not protecting the ball on offense or taking the ball away on defense is more important, McCarthy's stance is focused on the offensive side of the ball.
"I think it's bigger on taking care of it," McCarthy said. "Just like anything if you take care of the football every single week, you're never going to lose the turnover ratio, at worst it would be zero-zero."
Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer isn't particularly worried about his veteran quarterback's turnover struggles after becoming the highest paid player in the NFL, and noted that he feels Prescott will always bring more positive than negative to the table for Dallas' offense.
Dak's going to make way more good decisions than bad decisions…" Schottenheimer said. "They're not all just him, and so you got to go play the game."
Each week, the Cowboys track not only the number of turnovers that they are able to generate, but the amount of turnover opportunities that they have in a game as well. McCarthy mentioned earlier that the opportunities aren't that far off from the last three years, but more still need to come Dallas' way.
"The opportunities need to go up, we can improve there, because as those opportunities go up, the takeaways go up." McCarthy said.
Defensively, Mike Zimmer's unit has just four interceptions and one fumble recovery through seven games. He too felt that there were opportunities to take the ball away in recent games, notably on Sunday night against the 49ers when DeMarvion Overshown sacked Brock Purdy from his blindside but couldn't force a strip sack. For the turnovers and turnover opportunities to be generated however, Zimmer and the Cowboys defense need to make opposing quarterbacks uncomfortable.
"You go back and talk about turnovers and things like that, well a lot of those things come from pressure on the quarterback," Zimmer said. "And we haven't been getting a bunch of those."
A large part of that lack of pass rush has been the fact that the Cowboys have been without their best pass rushers in recent weeks, with Micah Parsons, DeMarcus Lawrence, Sam Williams, and Marshawn Kneeland all injured. Things won't get any easier this coming Sunday when Dallas heads to Atlanta to play the Falcons and Kirk Cousins, a quarterback Zimmer is very familiar with from their time together at Minnesota.
"Very, very accurate, takes good care of the football." Zimmer said of his former quarterback.
Cousins is the NFL's third leading passer through eight games, throwing for 2,106 yards in that span to go with 14 touchdowns and 7 interceptions. Cousins has struggled against Dallas in his 13 year career, with a 2-9 record against them. His nine losses to Dallas are the most against a single opponent in the league.
