Cowboys face litany of questions, issues after hyped matchup vs. 49ers turns into disaster
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — This is where the truth stalks the Dallas Cowboys.
If Sunday night wasn’t just another game, as head coach Mike McCarthy professed in the run-up against the San Francisco 49ers, then this cannot just be another loss. And if last season's playoff loss to the 49ers was something thought about daily, as Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said last week, then Sunday night might crawl into some nights, too. That’s how rough this moment was for the Cowboys — a 42-10 loss at the hands of the 49ers and a measuring stick that turned out to be a stick of dynamite.
The eventual No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs? We might look back in a few months and recognize this as where it blew up for Dallas — in a fit of defensive mistakes, offensive ineptitude and coaching deficiencies. And for those very reasons, we don’t have to wait on assessing the more immediate question, which everyone wanted to know leading into this matchup: Whether or not the Cowboys have finally ascended to the weight class of the 49ers.
They haven’t. That curiosity is gone, nothing more than smoke in the vapor trail of a long flight home.
“It’s a punch in the gut, a kick in the ass,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said Sunday night. “Whatever phrase you want to put on it.”
At the expense of meticulously picking apart a final score that doesn’t require an autopsy to figure out what went wrong, here’s the baseline of what we learned from 42-10: Against a team like the 49ers, who bring a deep and talented offense and a wicked defense to the table, falling behind 14-0 early in the second quarter on the road is not an option. Failing to establish the run and sustain drives with physicality is not an option. Putting Prescott into the position of having to be perfect while throwing Dallas back into a game against an elite 49ers front is not an option.
And the defense? Relying on folding up the 49ers with the same pressure that mowed down mediocre units in New York (Giants and Jets) and New England …shouldn’t be an option.
The 49ers are too good. The Cowboys weren’t good enough. In a litany of respects. Figuring out how to resolve that before the playoffs — where a rematch of this seems almost inevitable — will weigh on Dallas more than ever.
“I think it’s clear, you look at how this season’s gone, we’ve been knocked down,” McCarthy said. “Clearly. They beat us in all three phases. We will clearly acknowledge it. I’m not a burn-the-tape guy. I think that’s a crock of s***. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to go through it, make sure we’re clear on exactly what the expectations are, make sure we’re giving the players what they need to be successful.”
The candor from McCarthy will surely be appreciated by the fan base and ownership, even if it was accompanied by the typical clichés of, “I’ve got to be better” and rehashed notions of universal accountability. These words are standard staples at the NFL’s losing podiums nowadays, like a set of potted plants used to dress up the doorstep of a concerning failure. It doesn’t make the declarations less true, of course. But it makes them a familiar bridge to what really matters — legitimate improvement, renewed proof of problem-solving, and a stiffer chin the next time your most dogged rival materializes on a schedule.
That’s what faces Dallas now. The simple truth is we no longer can be sure the gap between them and the 49ers is simply a matter of not perfectly executing. Now it’s fair to wonder if the talent gap is more pronounced than what we were led to believe. Maybe it’s no longer feasible to put Prescott’s name next to Brock Purdy and easily answer which is the better player. Or maybe it is an easy answer (Purdy), but we can’t just get there based on Prescott having a longer résumé and gaudier statistics. None of those mattered Sunday night, when Purdy was far and away the better player of the two, whether it was seamlessly and decisively operating Kyle Shanahan’s offense, or occasionally extending, moving and creating.
Not that the loss was all on Prescott. As McCarthy put it, “I don’t foresee a whole lot of winning grades coming out of this performance.”
In reality, the 49ers' defense was faster and more physical than its Dallas counterpart. It was in more passing lanes and making better reads on the quarterback. It either beat up the Cowboys' offensive line at the point of attack or simply ran by it. The better running back? Christian McCaffrey. The better overall set of wideouts? They were wearing San Francisco uniforms. The best tight end? Hell, George Kittle looked like he was dating Taylor Swift on Sunday night.
While all of that talent is a known commodity for the Cowboys, the unknown was not seeing it as exponentially better when the two teams stepped on a field. That has to ring a little different now, particularly when McCarthy and so many players had no sense of Sunday’s outcome being realistic.
“I didn’t see it coming,” Prescott said. “I put everything into this and I got punched in the mouth. [I called it] a humbling against Arizona. But this may be the most humbling game I’ve ever been a part of.”
When you piece all of this together, it feels like Dallas might not have to go back to the drawing board entirely — but it definitely has to come up with a new plan of attack when it comes to the 49ers, particularly if injuries continue to roll in, with the Cowboys' secondary already feeling the loss of cornerback Trevon Diggs, and now facing a potentially bad situation with a neck injury to linebacker Leighton Vander Esch.
Grappling with those physical injuries and whatever mental toll this one takes might be what forms the rest of the road for these Cowboys. That may be the case with a brutally tough remaining schedule that's stacked with almost nothing but measuring sticks. Many of those opponents will look at this game and maybe surmise that Dallas isn’t as scary as everyone thought after stacking up wins against the Giants, Jets and Patriots.
Surely, Dallas got San Francisco’s best shot. But more of those are likely coming. A lot more.
“You gotta learn how to take a punch,” Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons said. “We got punched in the face tonight. That’s just the reality of it. I’m not shying from it. We got beat up in all phases. The psyche — it can’t really drop [off] because I think I understand it. No champion hasn’t been battle tested. Sometimes you get knocked down. Sometimes you lose a couple rounds. It’s about how you return after. How do you face adversity? How do you get better? How do you not let this control you? That’s the thing — I get tomorrow. Today’s what it is. I get tomorrow.”
And tomorrow, he’ll get game tape. Because McCarthy isn’t burning this one, even if so many other things went up in flames.
