The Cowboys’ secondary opened the preseason with a number that jumps off the page: zero missed tackles against the Seahawks on Sunday. It was the kind of clean first step that has been missing for too long, and it came with an 88.8 defensive passer rating that pointed to a far sharper night for the reserve-level defense.
Bobby Belt highlighted the missed-tackle swing, noting that the Cowboys were charted with 19 in last year’s preseason opener and none this time. That is the sort of change that makes people look twice, even with the reminder that this was only one preseason game and most of the players on the field will not be on the 53-man roster when the games count.
The difference also showed up in the passing numbers. Dallas allowed a defensive passer rating of 88.8 on Sunday, almost 21 points better than last year’s average and a figure that would have ranked 13th in the league over a full season. In 2025, the Cowboys finished with a 109.6 defensive passer rating, the worst mark in the league, so even a preseason snapshot this early carries a clear contrast to what came before.
The finer detail matters because the improvement was not spread evenly across the defense. Every Cowboys cornerback who played on Sunday finished below the 114.8 DPR average posted by the cornerbacks in 2025, and the highest individual DPR among them was 99.0. The five safeties who played against Seattle were targeted just once, and that throw fell incomplete, leaving them with a combined 39.6 DPR after a 134.6 average a year ago. The linebackers were also below last year’s unit average of 118.5 DPR.
Still, the numbers come with a built-in warning. Drew Lock and Jalen Milroe did not test the Cowboys deep very often, so part of the lighter defensive rating came from what Seattle chose not to do as much as from what Dallas stopped. That does not erase the clean tackling or the better coverage, but it does make the performance harder to read as proof rather than promise.
What comes next should tell a little more. The Cowboys face the Cardinals this week, and Arizona posted a 130.6 passer rating in its first preseason game. If Dallas backs up Sunday’s work against that kind of pass efficiency, the opening-night numbers will look less like a tease and more like the first sign that this secondary is different.
