The second NFL Thanksgiving Day game will feature two rivals from the NFC East. The Washington Commanders will take on the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The game will kick off at 4:30 p.m. ET and air on CBS. It will also stream on Paramount+ and NFL+.
The Commanders (4-7) are not playing great football right now as they have lost four of their last five games. Last week, Washington suffered a 31-19 loss to the New York Giants, and quarterback Sam Howell struggled in the game as he threw three interceptions. Howell has had a solid 2023 season, though, completing 66.7 percent of his passes while throwing for 3,038 yards, 18 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions with an 88.6 passer rating.
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But could this be the final year for head coach Ron Rivera who has been with Washington since 2020 and has yet to have a winning season with the team? “I don’t worry about that,” Rivera said about his future. “If we go 8-8-1 this year and he fires me, and next year they win the division and 40 of the 53 players we drafted, and it’s the same quarterback, I’m vindicated. Send me my Super Bowl ring. That’s the way I look at it. I want us to be right and to see this community have that excitement again.”
The Cowboys (7-3) have been playing some of their best football of the year, winning three of their last four games with the only loss coming against the Philadephia Eagles. Quarterback Dak Prescott has been at the top of his game, completing 70 percent of his passes while throwing for 19 touchdowns and posting a 104 passer rating. But the story this year has been the play of cornerback DaRon Bland who was recently named NFC Player of the Week. Bland intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown in the Cowboys’ 33-10 win over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. He now has six interceptions on the year and four of the picks have been returned for touchdowns. Bland needs one pick-six to set the NFL single-season record.
“It just makes another goal to break it,” he said about the record, per the Cowboys’ official website. “I think it was when I touched the end zone, it was like, ‘Wow, I just did it. I tied the record.’ I’m level-headed now and I want to go break it. It wasn’t really about the record. It’s really about being in the history books, being remembered.”
