What a surprise, the Cowboys fail to live up to expectations. The Cowboys have again utterly collapsed when the weight of pressure and attention was on them as they were humiliated 19-3 by the Buccaneers on Sunday Night Football.
It is honestly getting pathetic at this point for the Cowboys. Once again, they have shrunken in the face of adversity and the national spotlight. I can’t even count how many times Dallas has now choked in important, season defining game, such as this one was, in the past decade.
Yet this game may have been the worst of the lot in recent memory as America’s Team was absolutely dreadful.
In 4 quarters of football, totaling 60 full minutes, the Dallas Cowboys were able to amass a grand total of 3 measly points against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, even with the roaring support of the Dallas fans behind them.
The Dallas offense has gone from being the best in football a season ago to now scoring the lowest points tally amongst every single team that has played their Week 1 games thus far.
Even the New England Patriots, who have had an atrocious offseason on the offensive side of the ball, scored more points than the Dallas Cowboys.
Actually, I can do one better as the New York Jets, the team that everyone thinks (more like knows) will be the worst in the NFL this season, managed to put up 9 points against the Baltimore Ravens.
Sure, Jerry Jones ruined this team’s offense by trading away Amari Cooper, letting Cedrick Wilson walk in Free Agency, and releasing two starting offensive lineman, La’el Collins and Conor Williams, and not replacing them.
But this lose solely and squarely falls on the shoulders of two men: Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott.
I’ll start with Prescott as he is the more difficult of the two cases to breakdown. I hate to say this, but Dak Prescott is not an elite quarterback and never will be as this game showed.
Before his unfortunate thumb injury (which I hope he recovers from quickly and safely) that knocked him out of the game in the 4th Quarter, he went 14/29 (48%), threw for 138 yards, 1 INT, and rushed for 11 yards.
Yeah, pretty pathetic. Especially for a guy that was proclaimed as “one of the Top-10 QBs in the league”.
Unless Prescott was injured prior to this game (which I don’t think he was), this game just showed how Dak needs Pro-Bowl caliber players around him to succeed. When Dak was throwing for 4,000 yards/season and racking up NFC East Division title with Dallas, he had Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, Cedrick Wilson, Dez Bryant, Cole Beasley, Jason Witten, a prime Ezekiel Elliott, and Ceedee Lamb around him.
Plus, he had a Hall-Of-Fame LT Tyron Smith, Hall-Of-Fame G Zack Martin, Pro-Bowl C Travis Fredrick to guard him against the league’s best pass rushers for his first 4-5 years in the league.
Now that only Zack Martin remains on the O-Line and Ceedee Lamb at WR (as Smith and Gallop are on IR), Dak’s deficiencies as a quarterback are more than evident.
Sadly, he is a quarterback that is elevated by his offensive peers, rather than one that elevates. It’s a good thing he bagged that 4-year, $160M when he did.
As for Mike McCarthy, that guy is just a terrible head coach. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team call so many trick plays in just the worst situations possible, as Dallas did on their opening possession last night, that fail MISERABLY time after time again.
Moreover, does McCarthy realize that getting penalized is a bad thing?
The Cowboys had 10 penalties last night for 73 yards as they seemingly have not learned from their disastrous and unprecedented 17-penalty performance against the San Francisco 49ers in the Wild Card round last postseason.
Mike McCarthy must either refuse to enforce discipline on this team or the players simple see him for the fraud that his is and ignore him.
Either way, along with being a so-called ‘offensive guru’ that could only help his team get 3 points, Mike McCarthy has again failed to learn from his mistakes and should be punished for it. Namely, Jerry Jones should kick him out the door before this season goes off the rails.
As it surely will with Prescott’s 6–8-week injury.
I hope Jerry Jones doesn’t think that this team can compete for the Super Bowl without their starting QB and also having a fool leading them every game.
Sure, Micah Parsons is the best, young defensive player we’ve seen since J.J. Watt and will carry this defense (as he did last night with 4 tackles and 2 sacks), but if the offense can’t score, what good will he be? Parsons can’t be the QB and the DE/LB at the same time.
And, Cowboys fans should be really worried that this team failed to score on a Tampa Bay team that wasn’t good themselves last night. Tom Brady had a pedestrian game as he only threw for 212 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, and completed 18/27 (67%) of his passes.
If Mike Evans (7 REC, 73 yards, and 1 TD) and new signing Julio Jones (3 REC, 69 yards) didn’t have good games, then the Buccs wouldn’t have been able to get the ball into the endzone. Dallas’ defense played well and were unlucky to give up that ridiculous one-handed TD grab by Mike Evans.
Nonetheless, it would be wrong to not mention how great Tampa Bay’s defense played. Lead by the recently promoted to HC Todd Bowles, LB Lavontae David (6 tackles), LB Devin White (8 tackles, 2 sacks), and Shaq Barrett (2 tackles), this Super Bowl winning core completely suffocated Dallas and didn’t allow the passing or run game to even get off the ground.
Tampa Bay is probably the best team in the NFC as Green Bay has fallen back, San Francisco are starting a rookie QB, and the LA Rams might suffer from the Super Bowl winning ‘hangover’. If this is going to be Tom Brady’s final season in the NFL, then he won’t have a better chance to make it through that NFC and try to win his 8th Super Bowl.
As for the Dallas Cowboys, let’s be honest and recognize that their season is all but over. How are they going overcome the Vikings, Eagles, Rams, Packers, Bengals, Giants, and Bears with Cooper Rush at QB? And when Dak comes back, they’ll either be 1-9 or 2-7. No quarterback an overcome that deficit to get their team into Wild Card contention.
It is a good thing that Jerry Jones is a good drafter as he’ll have a high 1st-round pick in the 2023 to showcase his skills.
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