The Dallas Cowboys fell to 1-2 on the season after their Week 3 loss on Sunday to the Baltimore Ravens. And as you may expect, this made for an incredibly jovial version of Stephen A. Smith on Monday’s edition of First Take.
Immediately after the game, Stephen A. posted a photoshopped picture of himself on X laughing while wearing an oversized Cowboys hat amongst a crowd of Cowboys fans who were clearly not as thrilled as he was.
This picture would largely encapsulate Smith’s mood when it came time to discuss the Ravens’ victory on First Take. He started things off on a more serious note, calling out the team for their “horrid” effort on defense against Baltimore.
“Yeah I do, I love it,” said Smith when asked if he liked the fact that DeMarcus Lawrence, Dak Prescott, and Micah Parsons called out their teammates after the loss. “It’s accountability. It’s a situation where you’re America’s Team and you stink. Your defense is horrid, you’ve been horrid. And as a result of that, you’re 1-2 on the season. And we see that the season-opener against the Cleveland Browns was a smokescreen. There is no other way to look at this.
“The fact of the matter is the Dallas Cowboys can’t stop a cold when it comes to doing things defensively. They can’t stop the run. You can play bully ball against them Shay Shay and that’s what you can do to take them out. Now, I understand that there are a lot of people who are miserable about this. Let me be the first to say, I am not miserable at all. I’m actually quite happy.”
Stephen A. then discussed the elephant in the room on the majority of sports talk shows Monday morning, which is the Cowboys opting not to sign Derrick Henry this offseason, who had a terrific game against the Cowboys on Sunday.
“Listen, I tried to tell him… I sat down with Jerry Jones weeks ago on my podcast and was like yeah, man, you didn’t go after Derrick Henry,” he recalled. “‘We couldn’t afford him’. You waited forever to sign Dak Prescott. ‘We signed him when we needed to sign him’. Waited forever to sign CeeDee Lamb, you did that.
“In the end, here is the bottom line. I had been screaming from the high heavens since day one, you go and you get Derrick Henry. Why do you get Derrick Henry? You get Derrick Henry to make sure you can run the football, protect Dak Prescott, and help the defense out long enough because they won’t be on the field long enough to get ran over. The likelihood is that you could be frontrunners because that’s what you’re experts in. And unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case for the Dallas Cowboys and as a result, we see what we have seen.”
The serious breakdown was a good one from Smith. But if you are at all familiar with his typical behavior after a Cowboys loss, you had to know that this was not the end of the Cowboys talk on the show. Later on, Smith took some time to laugh at the misery of the Cowboys fans while pictures of crying, or at least very upset fans showed in the background.
“Where the hell are those photos? Here we go!” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about right there. That’s what I need to see right there. These are new one’s Molly. Yes Molly, there we go! I mean, now my day is beautiful. I’m good now. I’m good now, go ahead Woody, the floor is yours. The producers are letting me down. Now they have made me happy.”
Only time will tell whether we see the Cowboys will bounce back from their rough start to the season. But thus far, it has been Stephen A. Smith’s ideal season thanks to their struggles.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.