Standing in the visiting team interview room at Ford Field last Thursday night, Brian Schottenheimer was asked about the Dallas Cowboys’ recent slow starts.

They fell behind 21-0 before coming back to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21, on Nov. 23. Four days later, they trailed 7-0 and then 14-7 before coming back to defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 31-28.

Last Thursday, the Cowboys trailed 3-0, 10-3 and then 20-9 at halftime before making a late push that ultimately fell short in a 44-30 loss to the Lions.

“It’s a fair question,” Schottenheimer responded. “I think that’s what we’ll look at these next couple days because I feel like that was the case obviously against Philadelphia. Spot them 21 and then Kansas City we were down 7-0. We weren’t very good on offense in the first quarter, first half (at Detroit). They had a few things that challenged us that I thought we made some adjustments to, but certainly the pass rush was a factor.”

Having had three days to look over that game, Schottenheimer provided an update Monday, but nothing exact about what he found.

“We’ve looked at some different things,” he said. “There are a few things with the openers that we’ve talked about. We’re big into deferring. Why? Well, we like to get the ball in the second half, that extra possession in the second half, I think it’s been good to us at times. It really comes back to the fact that the execution has not been at the level that we need it to be. We can score in a hurry and we’ve played well, but there’s not one thing where we’re like, ‘Man, if we do this, we’ll start faster.’”

In the Cowboys’ 13 games this season, their opponents have scored first 10 times. The three when Dallas grabbed the early lead were Week 1 at Philadelphia (a 24-20 loss), Week 7 against Washington (44-22 win) and Week 8 at Denver (44-24 loss).

The Cowboys are the third-highest scoring team in the NFL at 29.3 points per game. But they are averaging only 3.8 points per game in the first quarter, tied for 23rd in the NFL.

Their production is significantly better in the second quarter, during which they lead the league at 11.7 points per game.

The biggest first-quarter surprise is that there hasn’t been a single touchdown scored by star wide receiver George Pickens or No. 1 tight end Jake Ferguson. Those two have combined for 15 touchdowns this season.

Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is having one of the best seasons of his 10-year career. He has 12 second-quarter touchdown passes and six in each of the third and fourth quarters. But only two in the first quarter. Dallas only has two other first-quarter touchdowns, both short-yardage runs.

As Schottenheimer pointed out, the Cowboys do prefer to have the ball to start the second half. If they win the toss, they defer. But they’ve had the ball first in seven of their 13 games, so it’s not like they aren’t getting the opportunities to get an early lead.

The slow starts were a storyline entering Thursday night. Lamb and others talked about it in the days leading up to the game.

“We just gotta be ourselves, man,” he said. “We can’t get behind the eight ball. We can’t turn over the ball, and the goal for us is to take away (the ball) and not give any (turnovers). So, we do that, I feel like we put ourselves in the best position to win. We haven’t done that yet, but I do feel like we can get back on that road.”

The Cowboys didn’t turn the ball over in the first quarter against the Lions, but they managed only a field goal on an eight-play drive and then a three-and-out. They went on to lose the turnover battle 3-0.

“When you don’t play clean ball in the first half and you stay in second-and-long and third-and-long, it’s going to be difficult to win football games,” left guard Tyler Smith said. “I feel like the opportunities we did have to score early on, we kind of put ourselves further back than we needed to be.”

Regardless of what exactly the Cowboys plan to do to fix the issue, there’s too much firepower on that side of the ball for them not to be putting up more points early in games.