Packers Beat Cowboys 23-13 as Pieces of the Parsons Trade Return to Lambeau

The Green Bay Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 23-13, at Lambeau Field on Sunday night, extending their winning streak to three games and pulling the franchise to 4-2 on the season, according to a 23-13 final posted on the league's own game page. The win followed a 1-2 start that had included a three-touchdown loss in the home opener, and it came against a Dallas team that managed only seven points through the first 59 minutes of the game.

Quarterback Jordan Love threw for 276 yards and a touchdown, and the Packers converted their first seven third downs of the night — a sharp reversal for an offense that had entered the week with the lowest third-down conversion rate in the NFL, at 27.6 percent. Green Bay went 9 of 10 on third down in the first half alone, building a 17-0 lead before Dallas scored, according to a recap published by the team.

The numbers

Love finished 276 yards passing with one touchdown, a 6-yard strike to wide receiver Matthew Golden, and one interception. He was sacked three times and hit eight. Golden caught six passes for 104 yards despite several drops over the course of the game. Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott threw 54 times, completing 34, with two interceptions and one sack taken, and went 5 of 13 on third down. Receivers CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens combined for 15 catches and 143 yards on 29 targets, a high volume of work that did not translate into points until the Cowboys were already well behind.

Green Bay's defense intercepted Prescott twice, once by safety Evan Williams and once by rookie cornerback Brandon Cisse, who recorded the first interception of his career. The unit also stopped Dallas on two fourth-down attempts inside scoring territory. Cisse left the game with a shoulder injury and was replaced by Carrington Valentine; running back MarShawn Lloyd and tight end Tucker Kraft each left briefly with injuries before returning. Penalties were close to even — 11 for 96 yards against Green Bay, 11 for 108 against Dallas — in a game the box score shows was decided more by situational football than by any single explosive play.

A trade's long shadow returns to Lambeau

The game carried an undertone that had little to do with Sunday's box score. Fourteen months ago, Dallas traded edge rusher Micah Parsons to Green Bay in a deal that sent defensive tackle Kenny Clark and outside linebacker Rashan Gary back to the Cowboys, along with two first-round draft picks. Clark had spent nine seasons in Green Bay, and Sunday marked his and Gary's first appearance at Lambeau Field as visitors — a fact both players addressed in a team feature published days before kickoff. Mike Pettine, Dallas's senior defensive assistant and a former Packers defensive coordinator, was also on the visiting sideline.

I was there nine years. That's one of my homes. I got drafted there at 20 years old, became a man there.

Parsons himself did not play. He tore his left ACL in Week 15 of last season, had surgery in late December, and has been working through a recovery timeline of about nine months that has kept him off the field for all of Green Bay's first six games this year. His absence has forced the Packers to lean more heavily on complementary pass rushers and a defensive scheme built around takeaways rather than a singular disruptive force, a pattern that held again on Sunday as the pressure on Prescott came in flashes rather than a dominant individual rush.

A crowded division, a fragile climb

The win keeps Green Bay tied with the Chicago Bears for second place in the NFC North standings, both at 4-2, well behind the Minnesota Vikings, who sat at 5-0 after a bye week. For a division that several national outlets had flagged as the strongest in the conference entering the season, the Packers' third straight win is less a statement than a prerequisite for staying in range of the Vikings as the season reaches its midpoint.

Coach Matt LaFleur credited the turnaround to how the team handled its slow start, saying afterward that it comes down to how a team responds to adversity, and praising the defense's effort over the full game. Love, whose early-season interceptions and a lopsided home-opener loss had drawn scrutiny in Green Bay, was more measured about the streak, saying it feels good to get rolling with some wins while acknowledging the offense's uneven moments, including Golden's drops.

For Dallas, now in the lower half of a muddled NFC East race, the loss raises more questions than it answers. Prescott's completion total masked an offense that could not finish drives, and the defense that Clark, Gary and Pettine were brought in to stabilize allowed Green Bay's offense to control tempo for most of the first half. The Cowboys travel to Philadelphia next, a road date with the division-rival Eagles that offers little margin for another slow start.

Green Bay, meanwhile, gets a trip to Detroit to face the Lions, a fellow NFC North contender, with at least a partial answer to the question that has hung over its season: whether a team that started 1-2 could still crowd the Vikings at the top of the division, with Parsons' eventual return still somewhere on the horizon rather than on the field.