Know your opponent: In Dallas Cowboys, Carolina Panthers may face toughest test yet

Labeling the Carolina Panthers as “underdogs” for their home game against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon would be ... well... an understatement.

Head coach Frank Reich acknowledges that.

But he also considers it an opportunity.

“I think if you would talk to the players, they might not admit it, but when you’re going up against a hot team, it’s an opportunity,” said the coach of the Panthers, who according to Fanduel Sportsbook opened as 10-point underdogs for Sunday’s matchup. “Things have not been going well for us as a team. So it’s an opportunity to go up and prove that we’re a good football team.

“We beat one good football team; we need to beat another.”

The Panthers (1-8) are a few days removed from a 16-13 loss to the moribund Chicago Bears on Thursday night. The Cowboys (6-3), meanwhile, are fresh off a 49-17 win over the New York Giants, where Dallas’s quarterback Dak Prescott threw for 404 yards and four touchdowns — a punctuation mark to having won three of their last four.

The Cowboys’ offense also piled up 641 total yards in the game against the hapless Giants, the most since 1966, when they put up 652 vs. the Eagles.

Here’s a scouting report on the Cowboys, who will descend on Bank of America Stadium at 1 p.m. ET.

Dak Prescott, Cowboys passing offense on fire

There’s no denying that the Panthers’ defensive backfield has been impressive the past few weeks — keeping star rookie quarterback CJ Stroud in check and forcing Gardner Minshew of the Colts and Tyler Bagent of the Bears to struggle.

But those three guys are either new to the NFL or not career starters.

That changes this week.

Prescott, who’s served a prolific but imperfect tenure on America’s team since being drafted in 2016, is in the midst of one of his best seasons of his career. His stats: 2,415 yards (268.3 yards/game), 17 touchdowns, six interceptions, 70.7 completion percentage and a QB rating of 105.1. That QBR is third-best in the league — only behind San Francisco’s Brock Purdy and Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa.

Prescott has led the Cowboys to score 23 points or fewer only four times this year. One was a 20-17 win over the Chargers. The other three were the team’s losses — 42-10 to the 49ers, 28-23 to the Eagles and a headscratching 28-16 final to the Cardinals.

It helps that Prescott has weapons galore on offense. He has four receivers over 300 yards on the season: CeeDee Lamb (68 catches, 975 yards), tight end Jake Ferguson (36 receptions, 354 yards), wide receiver Brandin Cooks (26 receptions, 338 yards) and Michael Gallup (24 catches, 313 yards). Lamb had his third straight game of 10-plus catches for 150-plus yards against the Giants, an NFL record in the Super Bowl era. Also, Cooks had a breakout day, with 173 yards receiving and a touchdown.

The Panthers, for reference, only have one receiver with over 300 yards — and that’s Adam Thielen with 652 yards.

The good news for the Panthers is that some key pieces to the secondary are potentially coming back.

Reich told reporters Monday that starting cornerback CJ Henderson and outside linebacker Brian Burns are “doing well” in their respective concussion protocols, and top cornerback Jaycee Horn had his 21-day practice window activated after missing just about two months of action on injured reserve. (Horn’s playing status hasn’t yet been finalized, per this article’s online publication.)

Prescott, too, has taken his fair share of sacks on the year with 22. Dallas is 19th in sack percentage in the league with 6.76%.

Running back Tony Pollard is still good

The Cowboys aren’t one dimensional on offense, either. Tony Pollard, who is returning from a high-ankle sprain that required surgery in January, is proof.

Through nine games, the fourth-round draft pick out of Memphis has 135 carries for 529 yards and two touchdowns. That’s not as eye-popping as fantasy football enthusiasts might’ve predicted to open the 2023 season — just under 58.8 yards a game — but he’s the head guy on a deep, effective rushing offense.

Case in point: The Cowboys are averaging 117.9 rushing yards a game — 11th in the league — and have six guys with rushing scores on the year.

Rico Dowdle has the second-most carries on the team with 47 for 212 yards. He had a strong game against the Giants, rushing for 79 yards on 12 carries and a touchdown.

“I love Rico’s run style. He runs so dang angry and it’s beautiful,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said Sunday. “You’re just seeing the young man just finally get some opportunities.”

The Panthers, as has been well-documented, are in the bottom quarter of the league in rushing defense. They give up 131.9 yards a game on the ground — and also give up 7.9 rushing first downs and a league-worst 1.7 rushing touchdowns a game on average.

Micah Parsons headlines stingy defense

There are a bunch of ways to explain that the Cowboys have a good defense.

Opponent points per game? 18.3. That’s Top 5 in the NFL.

Opponent yards per game? 275.1. That’s Top 3.

Takeaways per game? 1.6. That’s just outside the Top 10, but the team’s turnover margin of +0.4 speaks for itself.

But the easiest way to articulate how good this defense is to simply acknowledge that the Cowboys have one of the best defenders in football — and that’s Micah Parsons.

Parsons, the 6-foot-3, 245-pound linebacker out of Penn State, has 7.5 sacks on the year (tied for 10th-most in the league) and 10 tackles for loss (tied for sixth-most in the league). His presence changes games and offenses.

He’s not a one-man show, either. There are six other guys who have notched more tackles than Parsons. Those guys: linebacker Damone Clark (60 tackles), safety Markquese Bell (43), safety Jayron Kearse (40), cornerback Daron Bland (33), safety Donovan Wilson (32) and cornerback Stephon Gilmore (32) — the 33-year-old who will go down as one of the best cornerbacks born in the Carolinas. Bland also has five interceptions, second most in the NFL, three of which have been returned for touchdowns.

The Panthers, meanwhile, are still wrestling with their offensive identity. Reich has said the team wants to be a tough, run-heavy team, and have offensive options spring from there.

The team is still dwelling in the bottom third in rushing yards per game — and rookie quarterback Bryce Young has struggled as a passer. That’s particularly true if you look at his sack rate: Young is playing behind an offensive line that has given up, on average, 3.6 sacks a game (28th in the NFL) — and they haven’t necessarily faced vaunted defensive fronts recently. (Take Chicago for example, where he was sacked three times.)

In this way, and in many other ways aforementioned, the Cowboys might be the Panthers’ toughest test yet.