One Week of football was enough to erase an entire offseason’s worth of optimism surrounding Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones. He mortgaged his team’s future to win now, had the second-ranked offense in the league, and spent the 2026 offseason trying to build a better defense. Week 1 was supposed to be the battleground where this new defense proves itself. Instead, a 28-20 beatdown showed everyone that nothing had really changed. And former NFL cornerback Asante Samuel has officially had enough.

“Jerry Jones spent a lot of money to get the same results. Time to retire bud,” Samuel wrote on his X handle.

Asante Samuel’s words notably came above a repost of a clip from his Say What Needs To Be Said podcast, where he put the Dallas offense – as well as Jerry Jones – on blast for their Week 1 struggles.

“One thing I learned about playing in the NFL, no matter how much money these owners have, you can’t buy a good team,” he said. “The Cowboys are the same sorry, undisciplined team they have been for years. Soft in the middle and barely able to hold the edge on the outside. Dak Prescott will fold under pressure early in the game, make tons of mistakes, but make it look good at the end when he’s fighting to make a comeback.

“Yeah, he’s one of those players. He’s going to have a couple of 350-yard games with four touchdowns, and CeeDee Lamb will have 180 yards and George Pickens will have 160 yards. But Dak Prescott won’t play like the clutch quarterback he needs to be over and over to win championships for the Dallas Cowboys. That’s who they are.”

Now, Dak Prescott’s offense didn’t look like the same unit as it did last year. Perhaps it was the absence of Tyler Smith at right guard that led to Prescott being pressured more as he went 22-of-34 for 175 yards, two touchdowns, and a pick. While the team only managed 244 total yards with 23:20 minutes of possession, they also failed to unlock the run game, resulting in only 4 rushing first downs. But beyond the surprising offensive struggles, the biggest noticeable gap was – even now – the defense.

The Dallas defense allowed the Giants to march downfield for 394 total yards, let quarterback Jaxson Dart and running back Cam Skattebo rack up crucial third downs, failed to get a single interception, and allowed their offense to control the clock for 36:40 minutes. By the time the Giants went into victory formation after the two-minute warning in Q4, everybody knew the Cowboys had been outplayed every step of the way.

After the game, head coach Brian Schottenheimer did make the case that this was a young defense and that they’d have to coach them better. As for new defensive coordinator Christian Parker’s Cowboys debut, Schottenheimer still firmly believes in him, but knows the Cowboys need to get better fast.

“[Parker] is going to be hardest on himself anyways, he and the defensive staff,” Schottenheimer said. “But at the end of the day, when you look at the numbers, they were four-for-four in the red zone. They were 9-for-11 with a kneel-down on third down. It’s just not good enough. And so, we’ve got to figure out why, and we’ve got to do it in a hurry because we’ve got a good football team, another division opponent, coming into AT&T on Sunday.”

As for Asante Samuel’s take, he’s not the only one who sees flaws in the Cowboys’ 2026 offseason rebuild. Former Cowboys quarterback and CBS’ college football color commentator Ben NiDucci has also called out the defense, calling the unit “Swiss cheese” on social media.

But not all the reviews are negative. Legendary Cowboys WR Michael Irvin, for one, has even bet his hair on national TV that Dallas will shake off the rust and head straight to the NFC championships.

The Cowboys, at home in Week 2, face the Washington Commanders. One week of work may not be enough to turn this defense around – unless Jerry Jones pulls off that defensive trade he’s been hinting at all offseason. But the improvements must now come on both sides of the ball unless Jerry wants to go three straight years without a playoff berth after all the investments he made on his team this offseason.