10 truths from Cowboys' loss: Mike McCarthy has no idea how to get Dallas to respond to adversity - The Dallas Morning News

kotortopo.blogspot.com

Here are 10 truths from the Cowboys' 25-3 loss to the Washington Football Team on Sunday at FedExField:

1. Right now, the winless New York Jets are probably the only NFL team playing worse than the Dallas Cowboys. What else can you think after Washington beat Dallas, 25-3, at FedExField in a game that wasn’t even that close? Washington, which entered the game on a five-game losing streak, was the NFL’s worst team running the ball. They gashed Dallas for 208 yards and 5.3 yards per carry. The Cowboys have now trailed by at least 14 points in six consecutive games. And in 20 possessions without quarterback Dak Prescott in the past two games, the Cowboys have produced one touchdown, two field goals, five turnovers, nine punts and a safety. The players admittedly play with no confidence, and the coach admittedly hasn’t figured out how to stop the team from making the same mistakes game after game.

2. Mike McCarthy said he’s frustrated. Who can blame him? He has no idea how to get this team to respond. They commit the same mistakes each week, they look uninterested way too often and they have been non-competitive for the past two games. Even the best players on this team can’t get the others to follow them, which is puzzling. McCarthy has a lot of excuses at his disposal from injuries to COVID-19, but teams with first-year coaches in Cleveland and Carolina aren’t playing as poorly as Dallas. McCarthy was hired to win now. How many embarrassing losses will the Cowboys endure before Jerry and Stephen Jones wonder if they have made a mistake?

3. Any time a team uses three starting quarterbacks in a season, it’s probably going to be a bad season. It has happened three times to the Cowboys in the last 20 seasons. It happened in 2000 and 2001, when Dallas went 5-11 twice and in 2015, when the Cowboys finished 4-12. In 2000 and 2001, the Cowboys were searching for a franchise quarterback. In 2015, Tony Romo broke his collarbone, forcing the Cowboys to use a litany of quarterbacks. Well, the Cowboys are down to their third quarterback after backup Andy Dalton suffered an apparent concussion on a brutal hit by linebacker Jon Bostic that resulted in him being ejected. Dalton, scrambling out of the pocket, was sliding when Bostic hit him in the head. Dalton’s helmet flew off and he laid motionless on the ground for several seconds before being helped off. Dalton had completed just 9 of 19 passes for 75 yards, and Washington harassed him much of the afternoon. It should surprise no one if Dalton misses Sunday’s game against Philadelphia, leaving DiNucci as the team’s third starting quarterback this season.

4. DiNucci, a seventh-round pick, stepped on an NFL field for the second time after Dalton left. DiNucci’s first snap resulted in a fumble, when his pitch to Elliott was behind the runner. His first pass resulted in a 32-yard completion. He completed two of three passes for 39 yards, and he was sacked three times. The Cowboys like DiNucci because he has some intangibles in the leadership arena, and he’s talented. But he has some technical flaws they’d like to clean up to see what he can really become.

5. Bostic was ejected for his cheap shot on Dalton, and the NFL should have suspended him for at least a game. Maybe, two. But it does beg the question: Why didn’t his teammates rush to his defense? Why didn’t somebody yank Bostic’s face mask? McCarthy was disappointed in the response from his players, as he should’ve been. Perhaps, they were as uninterested in that confrontation as they had been in playing.

6. The Cowboys' league-leading 10th fumble occurred on their first possession, when tight end Dalton Schultz couldn’t block safety Landon Collins. The result: Dalton was sacked and fumbled. Schultz recovered the ball in the end zone, but was tackled for a safety. Washington, on the ensuing drive and with 3:48 left in the first quarter, scored a touchdown to extend the lead to 9-0. That pretty much ended the game.

7. Rookie Antonio Gibson had never rushed for more than 55 yards in a game, and he had never had a run longer than 20 yards. He took care of both of those in the first quarter against the Cowboys, finishing with a career-high 128 yards. His 40-yard run in the first quarter was also the longest of his career. Playing the Cowboys is good for most running backs. Last week, Arizona’s Kenyan Drake tallied 164 yards. His previous season-high had been 86 yards. Dallas is last in the NFL in run defense (178.2 yards per game) and tied for last in average yards allowed per carry (5.2 yards per carry). It’s hard to get dominated on the line of scrimmage and win games. Washington had been the NFL’s worst rushing team entering Sunday, averaging 82.1 yards and 3.5 per carry.

8. This offensive line struggled every bit as much as folks thought it would given its injury situation. Connor Williams is the only dude starting in Week 7 that Dallas expected to be starting when the season began. They played like it. Washington sacked Dallas quarterbacks six times and hit them eight other times. The Cowboys averaged 2.6 yards per play, managing just 142 yards. They couldn’t run. Or pass. It wasn’t really a surprise. The high-powered offense Prescott guided no longer exists. The Cowboys had just two plays of more than 20 yards.

9. For once, the Cowboys finally got an explosive kickoff return from Tony Pollard, when he returned a kick 66 yards after Washington had taken a 9-0 lead. It was only their second possession of the season that began on their opponents' side of the 50. But this abject offense couldn’t take advantage of it, settling for a 45-yard field goal by Greg Zuerlein. It had to be disheartening.

10. Elliott didn’t make much of an impact. Again. He finished with 45 yards on 12 carries, while catching one pass for six yards. The Cowboys have trailed so often this season that Dallas has rarely had an opportunity to establish Elliott as a runner. Only eight of his 113 carries this season have occurred with Dallas leading. That’s not the way the season was supposed to go. Elliott has carried the ball fewer than 15 times in four of seven games. In his first four seasons, he had only seven games with fewer than 15 carries.

Jean-Jacques Taylor, a former SportsDay columnist, is the host of the JaM Session Podcast, which can be heard on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays via Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.

+++

Find more Cowboys stories from The Dallas Morning News here.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"Idea" - Google News
October 26, 2020 at 10:07PM
https://ift.tt/3mmv8Z8

10 truths from Cowboys' loss: Mike McCarthy has no idea how to get Dallas to respond to adversity - The Dallas Morning News
"Idea" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2VWDFI5
https://ift.tt/3d3vX4n

Bagikan Berita Ini