With 60 penalties on the docket this season, the Dallas Cowboys rate No. 10 as the most penalized team in the NFL here in 2026. That’s not great, but after the Week 8 loss to Arizona, it also feels that somehow the penalties on the Cowboys have been undercounted. Quinnen Williams committed an offsides on the first Cardinals series, his third of the past two weeks. And Rashan Gary made, arguably, the play of the game with his roughing the passer call on a late and high hit to Gardner Minshew, which gave Arizona a first down and set them up for a touchdown that cut the lead to 27-24 with 2:23 to play.
The Cowboys have talked frequently about the rash of penalties, but the problem has only continued to worsen, as Dallas has committed 26 penalties in the last three weeks, including seven against the Cardinals.
Cowboys’ Pre-Snap Penalties ‘Can’t Happen’
On Thursday, during an appearance on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said the team is trying to rein the penalties in.
Said Schottenheimer: “We talked a ton about penalties, but it is really important that you talk about, there’s two types of penalties—we’ve talked about this before on the show. You know, there’s the pre-snap penalties that can’t happen. We know that. Yeah, you can’t jump offsides. We’re jumping offsides way too much on defense.
“We talked with Quinnen about that, he understands that, he is the first to tell you, I have to be better. It’s those that we have to clean up and then the unforced ones late, RG, he has got to be better. He has got to lower his target on the roughing the passer penalty. We definitely point them out, we definitely coach them and our guys are receptive to the things we are saying. And there are penalties in practice that we remove guys and take them out and things like that because the unfortunate part is penalties hurt the entire team.”
The margin of error for this team is already thin. Making it thinner with penalties is not helping.
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