Cowboys look to replicate home success on the road vs. Panthers, cut down on penalties away from AT&T Stadium

FRISCO, Texas — “There’s no place like home,” is a quote stated via Dorothy as she returns to Kansas in the 1939 vintage film, “The Wizard of Oz.” The word additionally immediately applies to the Dallas Cowboys’ 2023 season. They routed the New York Giants, 49-17, in Week 10 to prolong the NFL’s longest lively home profitable streak to 12, and Dallas has received its 4 home video games this season via a blended rating of 160-50. Like Dorothy in the film, the Cowboys want to make a handy guide a rough forestall on the road in Week 11 towards the Carolina Panthers, a trail that hasn’t been so golden and even yellow to start the season, ahead of returning home. Dallas is 2-3 on the road in 2023, and it has allowed its combatants to rating first in 4 of its 5 road contests. 

Cowboys via location this season

• *Top 5 in NFL
• ** Worst in NFL

Cowboys head trainer Mike McCarthy did not have to trip some distance distances too ceaselessly as the head trainer of the Green Bay Packers from 2006-18, as all of the Packers’ department competitors have been in states bordering Wisconsin. That isn’t the case with Dallas, as all 3 of its NFC East department competitors — the Giants, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Washington Commanders — are on the East Coast, identical to the Panthers, its Week 11 opponent. McCarthy and his gamers dove into element about a couple of time table and logistical adjustments they made to assist jumpstart their present home profitable streak, like wrapping up all conferences via Saturday at lunch and permitting gamers to sleep in their very own mattresss. McCarthy refused to expose his adjustment procedure for road video games this time round, mentioning it “top secret.”

“We’re a football team that travels a lot, so our time traveling is high,” McCarthy stated Wednesday. “It definitely took me to my second year to get a hold of that. Obviously we go west and east, so it’s clearly different. I think we’ve changed some little things here that are definitely helpful for everybody. I’m really look at the stretch coming up from a scheduling administrative standpoint. … Last year down the stretch, I felt like we could’ve done some things better. Hopefully, it give our guys a little better time to prepare. I didn’t like how we played at Tennessee (a 27-13 Week 17 win in which they committed three turnovers) or at Washington (a 26-6 loss in Week 18) last year. I looked real hard at that four-week segment there, and I’ve already started making adjustments that are in place in the last three weeks. We can’t talk about it because it’s top secret. … We’re trying to pay it forward.”

One house of emphasis McCarthy used to be prepared to expose is the want to curtail their road penalty woes. Dallas averages 9 penalties a sport away from AT&T Stadium, the maximum in the NFL via a workforce when it is going on the road this season. His urged resolution for the problems is to get started warming up previous, so the workforce can get started hotter and sooner and now not fall in the back of early love it has in all of its away video games with the exception of its season-opening, 40-0 win at the Giants in Week 1 on “Sunday Night Football.” 

“Statistically, the first one is the penalties,” McCarthy stated Thursday. “Penalties on the road compared to home are way too high. Road environments, it’s a different challenge, especially at the beginning of the game when the crowd is the loudest. We’re obviously expecting a lot of Cowboys fans there on Sunday. I think the other thing I’ve tried to really emphasize is taking care of the football. It’s a different setting, different environment. Just maybe get out there a little earlier pregame to make sure you’re set to go.”

While some is also fast to blame McCarthy and his group of workers for the workforce’s self-discipline problems on the road, Dallas gamers stated it isn’t on the group of workers. 

“Mistakes aren’t coaching, penalties aren’t coaching,” protection Jayron Kearse stated Wednesday. “They’re not playing the game. It just comes down to us doing our job, us understanding in those tough and gritty moments, that’s where you have to be at your most complete when it comes to your mindset and your discipline. You just try to capture the same feeling that you have whenever you’re at AT&T (Stadium), on the road,” Kearse stated. “Whatever it is that you do for a home game, you want to do those same things for an away game. You just want to try to capture the same feeling, so that when you go out there, we can go out there and dominate the same way we do in AT&T.”

One doable solution to the penalty problems is to use a standard snap depend like they are at home as a result of there are lots of road video games the place the choice of Cowboys lovers are shut to the identical as the host workforce’s supporters. Other than that, they simply want to play higher, easy as that. 

“Obviously, we’ve been really, really good at home and you want to take anything out of that that we can,” Dak Prescott stated Thursday when requested how to repair the road woes. “But at the end of the day, it goes to our preparation, the way we’re preparing for the week. Guys have done a great job thus far. Got a great schedule by Mike. Guys coming in engaged, excited, loving their job. You can tell it’s all over guys’ faces. It’s in the way that they practice and just continuing trying to build. Honestly, I’m the same process all the way through home or away. I guess the only difference in my process is really where I’m laying my head to be honest with you.”