ARLINGTON, Texas — Dak Prescott threw his 249th career touchdown pass with 3:07 left in the fourth quarter Sunday, a 24-yard throw to CeeDee Lamb that moved him past Tony Romo for the most in Dallas Cowboys history. It was the last score of a 37-20 win over the Washington Commanders in the home opener at AT&T Stadium, where the paid crowd was 93,188.
Prescott went 26-of-31 passing for 279 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions, good for a 143.8 passer rating. Lamb caught 8 passes for 153 yards and 2 touchdowns. Jake Ferguson caught the other 2 touchdowns among his 4 receptions for 43 yards. Dallas is 1-1 after losing 28-20 to the New York Giants on Sept. 13. Washington fell to 0-2.
After every game, Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer goes through the turnovers, field goals, and touchdowns in a locker room speech, with a shouted “Yeah!” after each one. Prescott drew four of them Sunday. His teammates swarmed him and dumped water on him when Schottenheimer got to the record.
“It made me emotional,” Prescott said. “I love those guys. I lay it on the line each and every day. My love for this game, my love for my teammates. Any and every [teammate] that I’ve had, there’s tons of guys that aren’t in that locker room that I think about when I break this record, whether it’s them catching the ball, or them blocking or them on defense and just giving me confidence and getting the ball back.”
“But to see my teammates act that way, to see guys that have only been together for five, six months, have the joy, have the cheers that they do, it was emotional,” Prescott continued. “Very, very appreciative of it.”
Lamb handed Prescott the ball from the record throw. His 37 touchdown catches from Prescott are the most of any player.
“That was crazy to find out,” Lamb said. “It was obviously a lot of emotion. We needed to close the game out. I’m happy he relied on me to make that play.”
Dallas Cowboys Score On First Three Possessions Against Washington Commanders
Dallas scored on each of its first three possessions after Washington won the coin toss and deferred. On the opening drive, Prescott completed 5 of 6 passes for 53 yards and scrambled for 11 more before finding Lamb from 3 yards out to finish a 10-play, 66-yard march. The second drive reached the Washington 6-yard line after a Washington interception in the end zone was wiped out by a defensive offside penalty. Brandon Aubrey kicked a 25-yard field goal for a 10-0 lead after one quarter.
Washington opened the second quarter with a 27-yard field goal at the end of a 13-play, 73-yard drive. Prescott then completed all 6 of his passes for 49 yards, including three straight to Ryan Flournoy, and hit Ferguson for a 10-yard touchdown and a 17-3 lead. On the next Washington series, a 34-yard touchdown pass to Terry McLaurin was overturned on replay. Jayden Daniels threw a 4-yard touchdown to Stefon Diggs four plays later to make it 17-10.
With 5:01 left in the half, Washington took over at its own 35 and drove to a first-and-goal at the Dallas 1-yard line with 12 seconds remaining. The Commanders had used their final timeout. Three straight passes fell incomplete, and Daniels was hurt on the last one with 3 seconds on the clock.
Washington ruled Daniels out early in the third quarter and turned to Marcus Mariota, who led a field goal drive to open the half. A 47-yarder came after Washington lost a challenge on an incompletion down the left side intended for Dyami Brown. Aubrey answered from 44 yards at the end of a 9-play, 38-yard drive that took 5:30, making it 20-13.
On Washington’s next snap, Jaishawn Barham knocked the ball loose from Brown on a screen pass. Dee Winters recovered at the Washington 18 and returned it to the 13. Two plays later, Prescott found Ferguson for a 12-yard touchdown that tied Romo at 248 and made it 27-13.
Washington missed a 51-yard field goal wide right late in the third quarter. Aubrey made a 60-yarder on the following drive for a 30-13 lead, the seventh field goal of 60 yards or longer in his career, which extended his NFL record. He finished 3-of-3 on field goals and 4-of-4 on extra points for 13 points.
Mariota threw a 20-yard touchdown to Diggs with 9:03 left to cut the lead to 30-20. Dallas answered with an 11-play, 83-yard drive that took 5:56. Lamb caught a 35-yard pass down the right sideline on second-and-12, and five plays later he went up over a defender for the 24-yard touchdown.
Dak Prescott On Tony Romo Record And His Late Mother, Peggy
Prescott wore a Roger Staubach jersey to his postgame press conference. Staubach threw 153 touchdown passes for Dallas, Danny White threw 155, and Troy Aikman threw 165.
“I’m blessed, honored,” Prescott explained. “As I told you earlier in the week, records are meant to be broken. This is my time to break this one. Pretty cool to do it against the team I threw my first touchdown against ten years ago or so. Definitely humbling, something I don’t take for granted. The great history of this organization, of the past quarterbacks before me.”
“Super, super honored,” Prescott continued. “Super thankful. God’s great. Not taking it lightly. But as I told you, it’s just the beginning. I want to double it and plan to play for a while, so just getting started.”
Prescott’s first NFL touchdown came against Washington, a 6-yard run in a 27-23 win on Sept. 18, 2016. He came into Sunday three touchdown passes short of tying Romo and left with the franchise marks for passing yards, touchdown passes, completions, pass attempts, and completion percentage. Sunday was his 79th career game with multiple touchdown passes, which tied Romo’s team record. He entered 7-0 at home against Washington, and the win extended his home winning streak against NFC East opponents to 20 games.
Hours before kickoff, Prescott was already emotional thinking about his late mother, Peggy, and about the chance of breaking the record with a four-touchdown day. He felt her with him on the throw to Lamb.
“My mom was never short or never hesitant to tell me how proud she was of me,” Prescott said. “She was never, never short of that. And I could just hear that. And that’s enough. Thankful that my teammates, my coaches and everybody believed in me and all that, but that’s enough.”
“I heard that my whole life growing up, and I hear it now as loud as I’ve ever heard it,” Prescott continued. “I’m just blessed.”
Prescott was a fourth-round pick out of Mississippi State in 2016 and started as a rookie. He told FOX on the field after the game that he always thought Sunday was possible.
“Absolutely,” Prescott said. “Sometimes it’s great being naive. And I was a little naive just growing up thinking that I could do this and I could do that. But yet I think it puts such insurmountable belief in my head that I can accomplish whatever I want to accomplish. And any thought that I said or anything that I wanted to do, and I mentioned it and I said it out loud.”
“I had a mom and I had brothers who poured gas on those thoughts who told me I could,” Prescott continued. “As I said, you can call it arrogance, you can call it confidence, belief, whatever you need to. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have those thoughts, if I didn’t believe in myself like that.”
CeeDee Lamb Posts 153 Yards And Two Touchdowns On Record Day
Lamb has scored in both of Dallas’ first two games, which Prescott said he does not expect to stop.
“It was definitely fitting, and it wasn’t a great ball,” Prescott said. “I just saw it was one-on-one. I put it out there like, ‘CeeDee, please, just get this over with.’ And he did. And then I heard the crowd, I’m like, ‘Did he catch it? Did he not?’ And then when he’s running down the end zone, I’m like, ‘Thank God. Yeah, this is over.’ We can just move on and just play ball now.”
“Definitely fitting,” Prescott continued. “That guy, he’s been amazing. And as I just said, we’re just getting started, he’s just getting started. He’s a hell of a player. We started off these first two games with one touchdown in each game, and I don’t think it’s going to stop. Just his mindset, his mentality, just where he is in life. It’s only going to get better, and I’m excited for it.”
Lamb caught 3 passes for 41 yards on the opening drive, the touchdown included, and had 6 catches for 94 yards by halftime. He was targeted 9 times.
“I don’t think that was the plan, like, ‘Hey, let’s get the ball to CeeDee coming out here,’” Prescott said. “It was just do the things we do well and the plays that we run well, and it just so happened they went to CeeDee. And he got in a groove and had a hell of a night.”
Dallas punted once all game and went 3-of-4 in the red zone.
“It was just about how fast can we come out? How efficient can we be?” Lamb explained. “Obviously, we feel like that’s our standard, and the only way that we can do that is going out there and converting every first down, staying ahead of the chains, relying on one another, and then one of us getting in the end zone. It just happened to be me first this week.”
Lamb’s first touchdown came 4:59 into the game.
“From now on, I feel like we’ve just got to control the narrative, and control what we can do,” Lamb said. “If they give us the ball first, we’ll go score first.”
On the 24-yard touchdown, Lamb went up over a Washington defender for a slightly underthrown ball and came down with it.
“I’m ready to go play ball,” Lamb said. “If that means you’re relying on me, you’re safe.”
Sunday was Lamb’s ninth career game with multiple touchdown catches and his 28th with at least 100 receiving yards. His 153 yards were the fourth-highest total of his career. Lamb now has 23 games of 100 or more receiving yards since 2022. That ties Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson and Detroit’s Amon-Ra St. Brown for the most in the league over that span.
“Nobody else is more deserving than he is as far as that achievement,” Lamb said, “and I know we’ve got many more to go.”
Ferguson’s two touchdowns gave him the third multiple-touchdown game of his career. George Pickens caught 6 passes for 40 yards, and Flournoy had 5 for 23. The Cowboys ran 21 times for 66 yards, with Javonte Williams carrying 12 times for 30 yards.
Brian Schottenheimer, Jerry Jones On Dak Prescott’s Work Habits
Schottenheimer was emotional watching the locker room celebrate Prescott.
“You can’t talk about Dak, the player, without starting with the man,” Schottenheimer said. “The man is unique. That’s why I was emotional watching the guys celebrate him in the locker room. The way he plays this game, the way [he] leads us is special.”
Schottenheimer has been on the Dallas staff since 2022 and is in his second season as head coach. Some nights, he said, he has to kick Prescott out of the building.
“I’ve been around some elite quarterbacks and Dak Prescott’s preparation is something that is abnormal,” Schottenheimer explained. “They all work. They all prepare. They all study film, but this guy takes it to a different level. I mean, just the amount of film he watches, the communication, he’s up in our office till all hours of the night and watching film with a couple of our coaches and it’s just unique.”
“I think that’s what it takes and that’s what you love about the guy. But most people don’t see it,” Schottenheimer continued. “Fans don’t see it. I mean, he’s there till 9:30, 10 o’clock at night and sometimes I feel like I’ve got to kick him out. But he’s a special young man and he deserves everything he gets because he does it for his teammates and his brothers, not himself.”
Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones said the record put Prescott in pretty good company.
“I just think it’s such a statement for how he did it, how he does it,” Jones said. “And he does it with hard, hard work. He makes it look pretty easy out there, but anybody that knows it, you guys that see him at practice and training camp, knows that he’s the hardest working guy on the team. I’m proud for him, and boy he stands in with pretty good company to have broken that record.”
Jaishawn Barham Wears The Green Dot, Forces Key Fumble For Dallas Cowboys Defense
Barham, a rookie linebacker from Michigan, started at middle linebacker in his second NFL game with DeMarvion Overshown inactive. He also wore the green dot, relaying the calls from defensive coordinator Christian Parker to the rest of the defense. He finished with 7 tackles, 1 tackle for loss, and the forced fumble, which came on his first play back after a stop in the injury tent.
Parker is 34 and made his debut as Dallas’ defensive coordinator in the Week 1 loss at MetLife Stadium. Washington outgained Dallas 389 yards to 332 on Sunday and ran for 182 yards on 32 carries. Daniels had 69 of those yards on 7 carries before he was hurt, including scrambles of 18 and 20 yards. Dallas held Washington to 1 touchdown in 3 trips inside the 20.
A video of a heated sideline exchange between Barham and Parker circulated in the days before Sunday. Prescott said he watched it a day or two after it happened, then asked Barham about it in the cold tank.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Prescott said. “He’s a guy I had a conversation with [when] he first came in[to the organization], and when he first got to training camp; and it was a short conversation, but when I walked off, I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s wired the right way for defense.’ I like that. I went and watched the video. I think it was the next day, or maybe even two days after that, and I caught up with him in the cold tank, and I asked him, ‘The media asked me, and I finally saw the video.’”
“And it was just out of context, to be honest with you,” Prescott continued. “He was passionate. It wasn’t an argument between him and [Christian Parker], by any means. It was the epitome of who he is. He wasn’t happy with what they were doing or in his performance, and he was expressing that, and C.P. was just saying, ‘We’re gonna be OK.’”
“So, I’m not surprised at all that he went out there and played this kind of game,” Prescott continued. “I mean, even in how he answered that question to me, and he was like, ‘Yeah, no big deal. I just didn’t like, I thought we were playing soft or whatever, and I was pissed off about it.’”
“He’s gonna be a great ball player for us. He’s a great ball player in this league, and he’s just [passionate about] every opportunity he gets,” Prescott continued. “That’s the way that he’s wired, and it’s what this game means to him, and he’s gonna show it. I think tonight was just his second opportunity to do so.”
Lamb has been around Barham every day since the spring.
“I just know a dawg when I see one, and I know my teammates,” Lamb said. “I’m with these guys every single day, and have been with them since the spring. You get a good feel of a guy and how passionate he is about it, how much love he has for this game. It’s every day in how he prepares, how he approaches the game. I know Jaishawn. He’s a dawg, man. He don’t mean no harm. He just wants to go play ball, and exceed.”
Kenny Clark played in front of Barham on the defensive line and finished with 3 tackles and 1 quarterback hit.
“Just commanding the huddle, doing everything that he’s coached to do: coming out there being physical at the point of attack, getting guys lined up in the right spot, communicating all day,” Clark said. “He did a great job today.”
Quinnen Williams had 4 tackles, 1 tackle for loss, and 1 quarterback hit. He has watched Barham make the same plays in practice.
“The plays he is making, man, it’s super dope,” Williams said. “I see him making them in practice, and we’re super confident in him. [He] keeps building on the things he does well, and just like all of us, build on the things we’ve got to correct and just keep going, man. He played a great game. He played phenomenal.”
“When it comes to wearing a green dot, as a rookie, second game of the year, getting everybody in order, especially up front, and different things like that, [he] just continues to build on it,” Williams continued. “We’ve all got huge trust in him.”
Winters led Dallas with 9 tackles after returning from a second-quarter shoulder injury. Caleb Downs had 7 tackles and forced a fumble on a kickoff return that Washington recovered.
Overshown, Malik Hooker, and James Houston IV were among the Cowboys’ inactives. Dallas lost two more defenders during the game. Safety P.J. Locke hurt his foot on Washington’s first series, and cornerback Cobie Durant hurt his hamstring on the first-and-goal sequence at the end of the first half. Neither returned.
Jayden Daniels Dislocates Left Elbow Again As Dallas Cowboys Head To Rio De Janeiro
On third down from the Dallas 1 with 3 seconds left in the first half, left guard Chris Paul stepped on Daniels’ foot as Daniels backed away from center. Daniels’ non-throwing elbow bent backward as he braced himself, and his throw fell incomplete as time expired. He stayed down, started walking to the sideline, and went to the turf again. Several minutes after most players had left for the locker rooms, he was carted off with a towel over his head.
Commanders coach Dan Quinn confirmed after the game that Daniels dislocated his left elbow. He said imaging showed no fracture and that Daniels would fly home with the team.
“I thought he was really playing his [rear end] off,” Quinn said. “And we will rally so hard around Marcus until Jayden’s back. And that’s what we talked about as a team.”
Daniels missed all but one game in the second half of last season after dislocating the same elbow in a loss to Seattle last November. He finished Sunday 11-of-17 passing for 96 yards and 1 touchdown. Mariota went 11-of-16 for 111 yards and 1 touchdown. Diggs caught 5 passes for 47 yards and both Washington touchdowns.
Washington hosts the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks next Sunday. Dallas faces the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 27 at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, the NFL’s first regular-season game in the city, with the Cowboys as the designated home team. Baltimore won 28-25 when the teams last met, in Week 3 of the 2024 season. Kickoff is set for 3:25 p.m. CT on CBS.
