21 Missed Tackles: The Cowboys Can’t Afford to Make This a Habit

There are problems in football that require an offseason to fix.

You may need another pass rusher. Another cornerback. A different scheme. Sometimes the answer costs $20 million a year, a first-round draft pick, or several months of meetings in a room filled with whiteboards.

Tackling shouldn't be one of those problems.

And that's what makes one number from the Cowboys' first two games of 2026 so difficult to ignore.

Twenty-one.

That's the number of missed tackles PFF has charted for Dallas through two weeks. PFF also has the Cowboys ranked 31st in defensive EPA per play and 30th in defensive success rate at this early point in the season.

There is an important caveat here. Missed tackles are a charted statistic, and totals can vary depending on the service doing the charting. Complete public player-by-player numbers aren't readily available either, so we're not going to pretend we can neatly distribute all 21 misses among individual Cowboys defenders.

But whether another charting service eventually counts 19, 21 or 23 isn't really the issue. We've seen enough. And for a defense trying desperately to put 2025 behind it, missed tackles are a particularly dangerous habit to develop.

Last year left no margin for this

The Cowboys didn't enter this season trying to fine-tune an already good defense. They entered it trying to rebuild one.

Dallas surrendered 511 points in 2025, the most in franchise history. The defense allowed 6,409 yards, ranking 30th in the NFL, along with 59 touchdowns — also a franchise record. Opponents rushed for 2,133 yards and 24 touchdowns.

That's not the kind of season that gets fixed by changing the paint.

The Cowboys changed defensive coordinators, turning the defense over to Christian Parker. They changed personnel. They spent an offseason talking about improvement. Then the Giants arrived.

New York produced 394 yards in the opener, including 165 on the ground. Next Gen Stats charted seven missed tackles by Dallas. Afterward, Brian Schottenheimer acknowledged that the Giants were the more physical team.

For a defense trying to establish a new identity, that's about the last description it wanted attached to its first game.

Winning doesn't make the problem disappear

Week 2 looked much better where it matters most: Cowboys 37, Commanders 20.

Dak Prescott threw four touchdown passes. CeeDee Lamb produced 153 receiving yards and two scores. Dallas forced a turnover, and the defense made enough timely stops to help secure the win.

That's progress. But the scoreboard shouldn't prevent us from looking underneath it.

Washington finished with 389 yards to Dallas' 332. The Commanders rushed for 182 yards, and before leaving the game Jayden Daniels had already accumulated 69 rushing yards.

Put that beside what happened against Jaxson Dart a week earlier and something starts to look familiar. The Cowboys are having trouble consistently getting ball carriers — particularly mobile quarterbacks — on the ground.

That's where missed tackles become more than a number on a stat sheet. A missed tackle on second-and-9 can create third-and-2. A missed tackle at the line can turn a two-yard run into seven. A missed tackle on a quarterback escaping the pocket can turn good coverage into a first down. Every extra yard changes what the defense has to defend on the next snap.

The encouraging exception

There's also a reason not to turn 21 missed tackles into a blanket indictment of every Cowboys defender.

Rookie linebacker Jaishawn Barham has been one of the brightest spots. Through 79 defensive snaps, PFF has charged Barham with only one missed tackle overall and none on 38 run-defense snaps. PFF also credited him with six total stops and an 83.8 run-defense grade through the first two games.

Against Washington, his recognition and closing speed showed up when he forced a fumble that Dallas recovered. That's important because it demonstrates that the Cowboys aren't dealing with an unavoidable consequence of playing this defensive system. Good tackling is happening within it — just not consistently enough.

Here's the good news: this is fixable

There aren't many NFL problems for which the answer doesn't begin with acquiring somebody else. This can be one of them.

Tackling can improve through better angles, better leverage, better pursuit and better technique. Defenders can arrive under control instead of launching themselves at a ball carrier. They can use the sideline as another defender. They can wrap instead of reaching. And perhaps most importantly, 11 defenders can develop the habit of pursuing the football so that one missed tackle doesn't become an explosive play.

None of that requires a trade. None of it requires waiting for next April's draft. It requires coaching, repetition and accountability.

That doesn't mean every missed tackle is simply a matter of technique. Sometimes the mistake occurs earlier in the play. A defender can diagnose something late, take a poor angle or get put into space against an athlete who has an advantage.

That's why Parker and his staff have to determine whether they're dealing primarily with bad tackling — or defenders being put into bad tackling situations. Those are different problems. But both can be addressed.

Twenty-one is a warning, not a verdict

Two games are not enough to decide what the 2026 Cowboys defense will become. That's worth remembering. It's also worth remembering what happened a year ago.

Dallas can't afford to spend half a season discovering whether its defensive problems are temporary. The 2025 Cowboys allowed more touchdowns than any defense in franchise history, and the standard for 2026 can't simply be better than that.

There are encouraging signs. Barham looks like he belongs. The defense produced timely stops against Washington. Dallas forced a turnover and kept the Commanders from turning enough of their yardage into points to win the game.

But 21 missed tackles through two games belongs on the other side of that ledger.

It doesn't mean Christian Parker's defense is doomed to repeat 2025. It doesn't mean Dallas can't become a considerably better defensive football team as this season develops.

It does mean the Cowboys have identified one problem that shouldn't require another offseason to solve.

Dallas doesn't need a trade to tackle better. It doesn't need a new defensive system. It doesn't need to wait for next year's draft. This is one area where improvement can — and should — begin immediately.

Twenty-one missed tackles don't define this defense. But if the Cowboys want to make sure 2025 doesn't define it either, tackling would be a pretty good place to start.