The Dallas Cowboys are heading to Brazil on Sunday, and that alone makes this a notable trip. It is their first international game in 12 years, their second regular-season international game, and another reminder that this franchise’s overseas story is bigger than most people realize — and not exactly flattering if you stop at the raw Cowboys record.
Dallas has played 10 international games in total and owns a 2-7-1 record in them. That is the kind of number that tells you the Cowboys have been a global brand for decades, but not a dominant one once the plane leaves the United States. Sunday’s game against the Baltimore Ravens will also take them into a fifth foreign country, extending a history that already includes London, Mexico, Japan and Canada.
A strange, scattered international history
The Cowboys’ first game outside the United States came on Aug. 3, 1986, when they played the Chicago Bears in a preseason game at Wembley Stadium in London, England. They returned to London for their most recent overseas outing on Nov. 9, 2014, beating the Jacksonville Jaguars 31-17 in the same stadium. In between, they played the Houston Oilers in Mexico City at Aztec Stadium on Aug. 15, 1994 — the league’s first game in Mexico — and opened the 1992 preseason in Tokyo on their first trip ever to Japan.
There is a certain charm to that itinerary. It is also a reminder that the Cowboys’ international footprint has been built in fits and starts rather than with any real consistency. Four times in London, three occasions in Mexico, twice in Japan and once in Canada gives the Cowboys a history that is long enough to matter, but uneven enough to keep the conversation interesting.
Dez Bryant’s night stands out in the recent memory
The 2014 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars remains the most recent overseas benchmark, and Dez Bryant was central to it. He led the Cowboys’ offensive effort in that 31-17 victory on Nov. 9, 2014, a game that showed Dallas can still deliver when the stage gets unusual. The question now is whether this trip to Brazil becomes another useful marker in that history, or just another entry in a record that still leans far too heavily the wrong way.
That is the uncomfortable truth behind the spectacle. Brazil gives the Cowboys a fresh setting and another country to add to the map, but it does not erase the numbers. A 2-7-1 record is the headline that keeps following them around, and Sunday is another chance either to chip away at it or to let it become even harder to ignore.
