FRISCO, Texas — Sitting at 3-4-1 on the season, the Dallas Cowboys are still fighting to figure out their identity ahead of the bye week and the halfway point of the season. With the Arizona Cardinals flying into AT&T Stadium for the Week 9 clash on Monday Night Football, the name of the game is a simple one: bounce back from the loss to the Denver Broncos to climb back to .500 going into the bye week.
But while having one extra day of preparation will never be a bad thing in the NFL, CeeDee Lamb says the challenge is making sure he and his Cowboys' compatriots don't let their emotions force them into making mistakes — as it has in the past.
"You've gotta control your momentum — controlled aggression," said the All-Pro receiver. "And I feel like everything that you felt on Sunday, you could wait until Monday [to uncork it]. I feel like, as a team, it doesn't matter how impatient you get. [There's] no need to really rush that problem."
Lamb's point is to keep a steady head in conjunction with the glaring sense of urgency to turn things around, because the former without the latter is a recipe for more disaster.
"No need to really come out here in practice and exert all … the frustration that you're feeling from the last game, and you do it all week in practice and then not show up on a game. I would rather you practice hard and then show up on Monday and then we'll go from there.
Through their first eight games of the 2025 season, the Cowboys' offense, specifically, is a tale of two teams when assessing its effectiveness at home versus when they're on the road. When they travel, they're averaging a little more than 24 points per game but, when they line up at AT&T Stadium, that number mushrooms to over 41 points per contest — the best in the NFL.
Only two other teams in NFL history can boast such a statistic, and one is the Greatest Show on Turf (the 2000 Los Angeles Rams), and that's one hell of an offense to be mentioned in the same breath as.
"When we're home, keep home, home," said Lamb's equally electric counterpart at receiver, George Pickens. "You never want anybody to come in and take over. … Just executing, being consistent. I feel like if we start honing in on that, and we've got the bye coming up after this but, for the rest of the season, I feel like we'll do a great job."
That has to begin now for the Cowboys, and consistently, lacking a two-game win streak at any point this season in what's become quite the roller coaster ride in Dallas. That's something Lamb and others understand all too well, but they also know that understanding is one thing, but executing the plan is the other half of the equation.
And that's why Lamb is talking to himself as much as he's talking to anyone else regarding finding ways to step up to right the ship.
"I feel like that's us as a team, myself included," he said. "I'm not excluding myself, but I just feel like control your aggression, and then when we get the opportunity to go head-to-head against somebody else, unleash."
