The Dallas Cowboys fell to the New York Giants in Week 1, and the defense looked like it had no answers for Jackson Dart and the Giants offense. Missed tackles, a porous run defense, and an inability to get off the field made for a brutal Sunday night. 

But before you write the whole thing off, there were genuine positives buried in the wreckage. Three of them, to be specific. And I believe these silver linings are going to help the Cowboys win games in 2026.

I realize the positive talk might feel out of place after watching Dallas get dragged through the field by New York’s offense. But this is a long season. Let’s break it down.

The Cowboys defense attacked the football

The Cowboys could not stop the run. They could not contain Dart. They could not stop the pass. When they allowed a catch and had an opportunity to make a tackle, they missed it. Seven missed tackles in total for the game. Atrocious.

However, one good thing happened defensively: the Cowboys punched the football out of the Giants’ hands four different times. Dallas was close to forcing turnovers, and I hate to use this word, but when it comes to recovering fumbles, there is a real statistical phenomenon in the NFL called luck.

I hate using the word because these are professional football players. But what the data tells us is that if you force fumbles consistently, you cannot guarantee you will recover them because you do not know where the ball is bouncing or where players will be positioned on the field during the play. As long as you are forcing the fumbles over a long period of time, the recoveries will come, though. They did not on Sunday night, and that was a bad bounce for Dallas. 

Think about it: had the Cowboys gotten two extra possessions on offense in Week 1, who knows, maybe they win. Perhaps we even feel good about this unit’s ability to generate turnovers. Unfortunately, the one fumble they did recover was followed by Dak Prescott’s interception at the worst possible time.

Not only did Dallas force four fumbles, but they all came from different players. Caleb Downs had a strip sack on a blitz. Quinnen Williams got to the ball from behind on a play where Jalen Thompson was also involved in the big hit. Cobie Durant forced another, and Donovan Ezeiruaku did too.

I know it feels strange to say the Cowboys defense did something well given the circumstances. But they did, and the takeaways should follow.

Tyler Guyton showed out at left tackle

One of the most important Cowboys players heading into 2026 delivered, and I am talking about left tackle Tyler Guyton. He faced Giants pass rusher Brian Burns for the majority of the game and held him to zero pressures. None. 

Guyton gave up two pressures total in 36 dropbacks, and some of those came against Abdul Carter. If you line up the best offensive tackle in football against Carter, he is going to give up at least one pressure. That is the kind of player Carter is. I believe he will be somewhere in the Defensive Player of the Year voting at the end of the year.

Was it a perfect game for Guyton? No. There were missteps here and there. But I am encouraged about the way he played, and you should be too.

I have talked about pass protection, but Guyton played his best football in the run game. It was the first time in his career where I felt his size and athleticism were too much for the opposing defense to overcome. He was bulldozing defenders into the ground and climbing to the second level and showing that pop.

He got caught with some inside moves that he was a little slow to react to. But for the most part, Guyton dominated in the trenches, and that is encouraging. When the Cowboys picked him in the first round, you could see a version of Tyron Smith in there. Smith is the epitome of a supersized athletic left tackle, so the comparison is an exaggeration. But you could see the room for development. I do not think we saw that size show up on tape for Guyton in his first couple of NFL seasons. On Sunday night, it did.

That could be massive for the Cowboys offense because right tackle Terence Steele struggled as much as we expected him to. If Dallas can stop worrying about helping Guyton and focus its efforts on aiding Steele with extra blockers and protection schemes, the offense is going to operate much better, even if the right tackle situation remains a difficult one.

Dak Prescott played well and the offense found its rhythm

Starting the game with a three-and-out, not going for it, George Pickens dropping two passes, the penalties throughout four quarters of football including Javonte Williams’ taunting at the end of the game: not great. And we should not be happy about any of that.

Prescott’s interception was unacceptable. It was not really a bad decision. He was trying to throw it away but did not reach the sideline. A terrible throw, and I think he knows it. But when you look closer, Prescott actually played a pretty decent game.

If Pickens does not drop those two passes, you are talking about two first downs that never materialized, plus a lot of yardage. If the defense does not collapse in the second half and limit Dallas to only two possessions, you see many more points on the board.

Prescott posted the second-highest quarterback rating of the week across the NFL. He graded as a top-5 quarterback in EPA per play as of today.

I am not trying to justify his interception. But I look at other games around the league. I see Josh Allen make mistakes and get opportunities to make up for them thanks to his defense, even in a game where both teams scored over 30 points. I see Patrick Mahomes playing on easy mode with his defense against the Broncos and the run game backing him up. And I think: if the Cowboys offense is not perfect, they are just not going to win games with the defense playing the way it did.

But I believe the Cowboys offense is going to remain one of the best units in football this year. I hesitate to bet Pickens is going to keep dropping footballs. I do not think he will. Prescott is going to throw some interceptions along the way, of course. He is an NFL quarterback, for crying out loud. But we saw him handle the pocket well, overcome Steele getting beaten at right tackle over and over, and find ways to get the ball out quickly. We saw him throw some dimes throughout the game.

I am not concerned about the offense. And I think that is major for the Dallas Cowboys.