The Washington Commanders fell to 3-4 after losing on the road to the Dallas Cowboys, dropping below .500 for the first time in 2025.
It was a game where everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. Washington's defense was out of sorts from the get-go, giving up a touchdown on Dallas' opening drive. At halftime, the Commanders trailed, and they never clawed their way back.
The offense wasn't much better, even before Jayden Daniels left the game with an injured hamstring in the third quarter. That will happen when you're missing your top three wide receivers.
Commanders badly missed their injured wide receivers in demoralizing defeat to Cowboys
Throughout the week, the hope was that the Commanders would have Terry McLaurin back for Week 7 after he'd missed the previous three games with a quad issue. Instead, not only did the two-time Pro Bowler sit out yet another contest, but so did Deebo Samuel Sr., who is dealing with a heel complication.
Samuel's injury arose in the days before Week 6 and plagued him in Washington's loss to the Chicago Bears, when he was limited to only 15 receiving yards on four catches. He was visibly not himself in the contest, and the Commanders elected to play it more cautiously with him in Dallas.
All in all, it left Washington without both of its top wideout options as well as Noah Brown, who was finally placed on injured reserve with his groin injury suffered in Week 2. Luke McCaffrey, Chris Moore, Jaylin Lane, and practice squad elevation Robbie Chosen headlined the Commanders' crop of wideout targets in Dallas, and the results were about as expected.
Drops were a problem for the Commanders' offense, which was led in the receiving game by Lane's three catches for 60 receiving yards and Moore's pair of grabs for 59. Washington especially struggled finding extra yardage in the short passing game, an area where Samuel typically thrives.
Daniels also uncharacteristically missed a few open looks, as did Marcus Mariota upon relieving him in the second half. But the rest of the offense did them no favors, and if there was one specific area to point to above all else as an explanation for the loss, it was the injuries in the wide receiver room.
The Cowboys' defense is one of the NFL's worst. This was a game that was always going to come down to whichever offense outperformed the other one.
Thanks to Samuel joining McLaurin and Brown on the shelf, Washington never even had a chance.