Cowboys appear to have a glaring flaw that's been exploited in two straight games: 'We saw a weakness'

Texans coach DeMeco Ryans revealed how Houston copied Baltimore's plan to exploit the same weakness

Oct 7, 2026 at 3:51 pm ET • 3 min read

With a game on Thursday night, the Dallas Cowboys aren't going to have a lot of practice time, but when they do hit the practice field, they'd better make sure to spend some serious time working on special teams. The Cowboys apparently have a serious flaw in that phase of the game that their opponents have taken advantage of in each of the past two weeks. 

The flaw involves the Cowboys' field goal team, which has allowed two blocked kicks since Week 3. The first one game in Brazil when the Baltimore Ravens blocked a 59-yard field goal attempt by Brandon Aubrey. 

It was a crucial block because the Cowboys ended up losing by three, 34-31. 

The second blocked kick came in Week 4, and this time, it was the Texans who blocked Aubrey's field goal try.

That block didn't sting as much because the Cowboys ended up winning 34-30, but it took some last-minute heroics from Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb to pull out the victory. 

Having one kicked block is an unfortunate accident, but when you have to two kicks blocked, that's a problem that needs to be immediately addressed. Through four weeks, there have only been six blocked field goal attempts in the NFL all year, so it's definitely an issue if one team has surrendered two of them. 

Sometimes, when you attempt longer field goals, the kicker will hit the ball at a lower trajectory to add distance, but that's not what happened here as Jerry Jones pointed out during a radio interview with 105.3 The Fan this week. 

"The problem isn't with the kicker, it's with the protection there," Jones said. "We can fix that. I was shocked, though, that it happened two weeks in a row. That doesn't happen very often because you have a chance to really pointedly work on that."

So why has the Cowboys' field goal team been struggling so much? Houston coach DeMeco Ryans actually answered that exact question during an interview with the Texans' radio team this week. 

"During the film study, you definitely saw a breakdown in the protection," Ryans said, via PFT. "You've seen it consistently. That's how you study film. You look for those weaknesses, how you can exploit a team. We saw a weakness there in the C and D gap area."

When you overwhelm one side of the line, the Cowboys seem unsure who to block. In Houston's situation, the Texans' plan created an opening for Will Anderson, who basically went untouched up the middle to block the kick. A defender should absolutely never be able to penetrate like Anderson did up the middle on a field goal attempt. 

Ryans' coaching staff watched film of what the Ravens did in Week 3. Their plan was to test the Cowboys and exploit the same weakness that Baltimore exploited. 

"We were able to show that kick from the Baltimore game, how they were able to block it, and we're gonna design a plan similar to that to see if they fixed it," Ryans said. "That's what all teams do. If you see a breakdown, see if they fixed it the next week."

The Cowboys clearly didn't fix it. On the block in the Baltimore game, it was on the opposite side, but it was a situation where a defender (Keondre Jackson) came in untouched. Jackson found a huge gap between Terence Steele (78) and Drew Shelton (67). 

Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer admitted that things need to be better. Not to mention, Shelton hasn't practiced this week due to a hamstring injury, so the field goal team could have a new look come Thursday night. 

"Yeah, moving some pieces around," Schottenheimer said of his field goal team this week. "We were going to move some pieces around anyways because it hasn't been very good. We've got a good rotation going, but at the end of the day, we just got to clean some things up from a technical standpoint."

Heading into this week's game against the Buccaneers, the pressure is now on Cowboys special teams coach Nick Sorensen to make sure these problems have been fixed. 

Blocked field goals are rare, but we could see one on Thursday night. Since the start of the 2025 season, Buccaneers kicker Chase McLaughlin has had more field goal attempts blocked (3) than any other kicker. Thanks to the past two weeks, Aubrey is now tied for second on that list with two field goals blocked in that same span.