Jori EpsteinSenior reporterWed, December 3, 2025 at 6:02 AM UTC·9 min readDuring the Dallas Cowboys’ 2023 matchup against the Detroit Lions, Dak Prescott nearly absorbed a safety. Lions defenders swarmed and contacted the Cowboys quarterback in his own end zone.
On third-and-13 with 3:40 to play in the first quarter, the Lions rained down heavy pressure.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut Prescott evaded would-be sackers, scrambling to his right and heaved a ball 41 air yards downfield to CeeDee Lamb, who left a Lions defender sprawled as he raced the remaining 51 yards to the end zone.
The 92-yard touchdown anchored what ultimately became a 20-19 Cowboys win.
And it could point to the recipe if Dallas is to upset the Lions, who are three-point home favorites, on Thursday night.
At their peak, this era of Lions football has powered deception on offense and aggression on defense to dominance a la last year’s 15-2 regular-season record. This year’s operation has revealed more cracks, though. And Dallas’ offense has shown it can keep pace with other higher-powered operations. So as its defense continues to establish an identity anchored in stopping the run and dominating the line of scrimmage, can the Cowboys pace the Lions in a way they failed to last fall when the Lions arrived at AT&T Stadium and hung 47 on a Cowboys team that managed just 9?
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I can’t get that 40 points they hung on us out of my mind,” team owner and general manager Jerry Jones said Tuesday on Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan. “And that hook and lateral they did back there on that one pass play? That was just embarrassing, really. So I can’t get that out of my mind.
“I give them all the respect they’ve earned over the past years.”
While the Lions have earned plenty of respect, they’ve also revealed weaknesses that teams have sought to exploit. One of them, the Green Bay Packers rode to a victory on Thanksgiving: the Lions’ vulnerability to explosive plays.
While Detroit ranks 14th in total defense and 15th in points allowed, teams that fight through their pressure and tight man coverage have much to gain. The Lions have allowed 41 pass plays of 20+ yards, fifth most in the NFL, per TruMedia Sports. The Packers saw that, and they burned Lions defenders for five plays of 20+ yards, including Jordan Love touchdowns to Christian Watson for 51 and Dontayvion Wicks for 22.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementCould Prescott, with his receiving corp highlighted by Lamb and offseason pickup George Pickens, follow suit?
The Cowboys rank 11th with 37 completions of 20+ yards this season; they rank sixth with 165 total offensive plays going for 10 or more yards.
[Get more Cowboys news: Dallas team feed]
Perhaps the Cowboys’ 92-yarder in 2023 wasn’t an aberration. Perhaps it’s the roadmap to outlasting a Lions team that can run up the score.
“The Lions do it one of a kind,” Lamb said of their physicality. “They line up and they don’t care who you got out there. They’re going to line up and they ready to play insane.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“It is going to be physical, it’s going to be long, it’s going to be hard. And it’s a playoff game, essentially.”
Can Lions contain Lamb, Pickens at same time?
Several factors, including the Cowboys’ defense, differentiated Dallas’ ability to manage the Lions in 2023 compared to 2024.
The Prescott-Lamb connection ranks highly.
In the 2023 win, Prescott completed 68.4% of passes for 345 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. Lamb finished with 13 catches on 17 targets for 227 yards and a touchdown.
Last year, those numbers fell to 51.5% completion for 178 yards, no touchdowns and an interception. Lamb caught just seven of 14 targets from Prescott for 89 yards and no score.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Cowboys know that physicality from Lions defenders will come. The question is whether they will be able to handle it.
“Knowing a team that comes in here or that we have to go and play and that's the staple of who they are — we got to know the importance of being physical more than ever,” Prescott told reporters this week. “They're a group that's special in the DBs. They're going to make the refs call [their physicality] and us as receivers, we got to be just as physical and make the ref call it, make the ref, make sure he sees that it's DPI. And you have to be more physical than those guys a lot of times to get that call or if not, right, they're just going to say, ‘Yeah, he locked him up.’
“And so it's important for us to be physical top of routes, off the line and just understand we've got to beat press and man.”
The Cowboys faced a similar style against the Jets and Aaron Glenn, Detroit’s last defensive coordinator, in Week 5. Dallas triumphed 37-22, Prescott throwing for 237 yards and four touchdowns.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOn Thanksgiving, against the Kansas City Chiefs, the defensive philosophy wasn’t identical, but yet again a team sought pressure up front and physicality in the secondary to slow the Pickens-Lamb one-two punch.
Prescott threw an early interception — and then rebounded to throw for 320 yards and two touchdowns. With 200 yards combined from Lamb and Pickens, the Cowboys edged the Chiefs, 31-28. Officials clamped down on the aggressive secondary play, flagging the Chiefs four times for defensive pass interference flags.
And Pickens has thrived against press coverage outside, totaling a league-high 432 yards and two scores in the alignment, per Next Gen Stats. Only the Seattle Seahawks’ Jaxon Smith-Njigba has averaged more than Pickens’ 3.2 yards per route facing press coverage outside; the Lions, meanwhile, have pressed receivers on a second-highest 37.3% of routes and third-highest 38.6% vs. outside receivers.
Pickens will challenge their discipline. Lamb, who has lined up on the opposite side of Pickens on 80% of plays, will create his own mismatch concerns.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“These guys are two of the top in the league, the top of the top echelon,” Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard told reporters. “They both run the whole route tree. The only thing I will say that’s really different is the physical nature in which George Pickens presents himself on the field: a huge, huge catch radius, very physical at the point of attack, wills himself open. Whereas CeeDee, he’ll sink them hips, he’ll come in and out of them, he’ll put you in a blender if you’re not right with your leverage, if you don’t understand what you’re doing.
“They do a really good job keeping them apart as well and what I mean by that is on opposite sides, which means you have to cover the whole field.”
Cowboys, Lions arrive at prime-time game with no margin for error
The Lions’ season-long performance bests the Cowboys’ slightly. At 7-5, Detroit currently sits eighth in the NFC standings above the 6-5-1 Cowboys at ninth.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut the direction of these teams has split.
Whereas the Lions won four of their first five games and five of their first seven, they haven’t won consecutive games since Sept. 28 and Oct. 5. The Cowboys started the year slowly, thanks to defensive liabilities that seem to have settled after acquiring star defensive tackle Quinnen Williams at the trade deadline and regaining multiple injured starters.
The Cowboys are hotter than they’ve been all season: After failing to win consecutive games before late November, they’re on a three-game winning streak that includes upsets of the reigning champion Eagles and Chiefs last week.
“I don't think it really gets any better, especially with everybody in the whole world understanding the situation as far as us all wanting to be in the playoffs,” Lamb said. “It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a good one.”
A Cowboys win would put them ahead of the Lions in the NFC playoff race and just a half-game behind the NFC East-leading Eagles. Dallas’ playoff chances would jump from 23 to 41%, per The Athletic’s playoff simulator. A loss would drop Dallas’ postseason chances to 9%.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA Lions win wouldn’t immediately impact Detroit’s standing in a tight NFC North paced by the 9-3 Chicago Bears and 8-3-1 Green Bay Packers. But Detroit’s wild-card case would strengthen, bumping their playoff chances from 30 to 45%, per The Athletic simulator. A loss would reduce their chance to 12%.
Sheppard doesn’t blink at the uphill climb to a postseason berth. The Lions are “exactly where we want to be,” he said.
“When we started this year, we had goals and aspirations,” Sheppard said. “All those goals and aspirations still lie ahead of us but now it’s just more sense of urgency — which it always should’ve been. But sometimes we all, it’s human nature, you need a little nudge.
“And I just hope it’s a wake-up call to us all. There’s an urgency and there’s a margin for error that’s no longer tolerable.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Cowboys will arrive in Detroit with that same sense of urgency. And they’ll look to ride explosive plays and a quarterback adept against the blitz to yet another win that keeps their chances alive.
They know they let their elimination get too close for comfort. But their road isn’t over yet.
“We didn't play good ball early and now we're starting to catch our stride,” Prescott said. “We're starting to figure out who we are on not just offense but defense and as a team. And yeah, it is fun. I can tell you that [I've] been on other teams where you started off hot and you're at this time of the year trying to figure out what you've got to do to get back on the horse and to have the momentum we do right now.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“[Having] the confidence and not just that, the right guys in the locker room who understand where we are, who understand that this is the most important time of the year and showing that and just their daily prep and throughout the week is fun.”
AdvertisementAdvertisement
