The Dallas Cowboys looked like a possible threat to come out of the NFC and represent the conference in a Super Bowl this season before Sunday night. Just a day later, most fans are ready to throw their hands up on the season and admit they fell for the bit for yet another year.
Cowboys frauds? Maybe. The embarrassing 42-10 loss that featured just one score (a field goal) in the second half featured a complete routing by San Fran. The Niners had the ball for over 37 minutes and doubled up the Cowboys in total yards and tripled them up in first downs.
The picture in the NFC crystalized: It's the Niners and Eagles, then a massive chasm, then everyone else.
All of a sudden, the Cowboys' loss to the Cardinals loss looks less like a fluke and more like a representation of who Dallas truly is...
After such a devastating game, the finger has to be pointed somewhere. These three-plus people need to shoulder most of the blame.
Virtually anyone in Cowboys secondary
Pick any name from the hat that played in Dallas's secondary last night and you can go ahead and cast some blame there. George Kittle had a hat trick, his first career three-touchdown game. San Francisco tacked on one other passing touchdown, and Brock Purdy threw for 251 yards with no interceptions.
Purdy didn't look as elite as he did the week before against the Cardinals in terms of completion percentage, but he was still having his way, slicing and dicing the Cowboys defense in the passing game all night long.
Dak Prescott
Dak Prescott may go down when his career is all said and done as a good but not quite great quarterback. His performance on Sunday night is probably not a fair characterization of his game this season, but in the NFL, you're judged by your performance when the lights are brightest and the pressure is on, not how you perform against subpar competition.
The Cowboys have enjoyed a lax schedule thus far drawing the New York Giants, New York Jets, Arizona Cardinals and New England Patriots before getting their first true test in the San Francisco 49ers. Dallas looked dominating on both sides for weeks, enjoying the league's best point differential at the end of last week.
Now, we might look back at that and call it stat stuffing. Dallas fell to third and San Francisco launched up to first in the swing of just one game against one another.
A big part of that has to do with Prescott's inability on Sunday night. 153 yards, a touchdown and three interceptions is simply not going to do it. If this is how Prescott performs in a regular season matchup -- albeit, a tough one -- how can the team be confident in his ability to get it done in the postseason? There's a reason Prescott is 2-4 in playoff games, and it doesn't seem like those reasons have been smoothed out.
Prescott, frankly, just doesn't seem like the guy to lead this team to a Super Bowl. If Dallas is about simply staying relevant and stringing fans along for 18 weeks before an early postseason exit, sure, he probably does the job. But a Super Bowl victor? It's hard to see it happening.
Mike McCarthy
Speaking of figures not equipped to lead the team to a Super Bowl, it's never really seemed as if Mike McCarthy could get the Cowboys there. Were the Cowboys to make it past an NFC title game, it has long felt like it would be in spite of McCarthy, not because of him. He has a troubling tendency to mismanage games, especially when it comes to utilizing (or more accurately, wasting) the most precious resource in an NFL game: Time.
This week, he went galaxy brain and asked his team to limit their time scouting Niners film to instead watch film on themselves. The theory is fine in that the message was to understand and improve on their own weaknesses to beat their opponent, but in practice, it doesn't make much sense. With the Niners one of the league's toughest teams, it would have been a better use of time to, you know... scout them.
That aside, McCarthy is in his first year of play-calling duties for the offense, and last night was surely a lowlight of that new responsibility. Dallas went 4-for-11 on third downs, possessed the ball for a season-low 22:55, and only put up 197 yards (57 on the ground, 140 passing) the whole night.
The Niners are a great team and a possible favorite out of the NFC, but they were completely outmatched on Sunday. Micah Parsons said, even after the loss, that he believes the Cowboys are as talented. On paper, you'd be hard-pressed to argue that statement. That leaves one possible explanation: Execution.
McCarthy was entirely outmatched against Kyle Shanahan.
