Battered Cowboys show an embarrassing lack of fight in blowout loss to Washington
No execution. No effort. No heart. No fight.
Is there any hope left?
That is the real question facing the Dallas Cowboys following Sunday’s 25-3 loss to Washington. Their play was embarrassing and beyond pathetic.
There is really nothing else to do or say about the Cowboys now, aside from sending up a few prayers for quarterback Andy Dalton, who was briefly knocked out cold in the third quarter following a hit from Washington linebacker Jon Bostic.
Dalton got up on his own and walked gingerly to the locker room with the help of two Cowboys staffers.
Bostic was penalized for an illegal hit and ejected from a game that was already essentially over with Washington leading 22-3.
That no Cowboys player got in Bostic’s face after the dirty hit that left Dalton temporarily unconscious was another sad indictment of this team in Mike McCarthy’s first year as head coach.
“We speak all the time about playing for one another, protecting one another,” McCarthy said. “It was definitely not the type of response you would expect.”
But it was definitely the kind of performance and outcome that McCarthy is begrudgingly getting from his football team.
It was the Cowboys second straight loss of 20 points or more since franchise quarterback Dak Prescott was lost for the season with a compound fracture and dislocation in his right ankle back on Oct. 11.
After last Monday’s 38-10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals, the Cowboys endured a week of frustration and finger pointing that saw team owner Jerry Jones defending coach Mike McCarthy from some anonymous quotes from players who said they had lost faith in the staff six games into their first season together.
Instead of being motivated into putting forth an inspiring performance, the Cowboys had their worst outing of the season, and it featured all of the recurring woes — turnovers, a lack of execution and poor run defense.
“Obviously, there’s a high level of frustration,” McCarthy said. “I can’t stand up here and keep talking about taking care of the football, taking the ball away and just the fundamentals.
“We knew we needed to make some plays on defense. We’re going to need takeaways. We needed to take care of the football each and every series we had it. We didn’t get that done.”
And that was before Dalton was injured, giving way to rookie seventh-round pick Ben DiNucci, whose first few plays in the NFL included two fumbles, two sacks, a 32-yard completion to Amari Cooper and a two-yard run by Ezekiel Elliott. But in fairness to DiNucci, the game was out of reach long before he stepped on the field.
Following the Cowboys defense keeping Washington off the scoreboard on a fourth-and-goal on the game’s opening drive, Dalton fumbled on a strip sack by Landon Collins. Tight end Dalton Schultz slid into the end zone to recover the ball, but that resulted in a safety when he couldn’t get out before being swarmed by Washington defenders.
Right before the end of the first half, Dalton threw an interception that bounced off the hands of Elliott, which killed the Cowboys best chance for a touchdown. It marked the sixth consecutive game that the Cowboys had at least two turnovers in a contest. It was also the sixth consecutive game in which they trailed by at least 14 points at some point.
With Prescott comebacks were possible, even expected. Without Prescott, there doesn’t appear to be any fight to try to battle back. And perhaps most disappointing, is that the lack of competitive fire against Washington came after a week of turmoil. McCarthy may not have lost the team, but he certainly hasn’t been able to reach them.
“I would say frustration, clearly. No doubt about it,” McCarthy said. “We talked at halftime about the ‘here we go again’ mode on the sidelines. You know, we’ve got to move past that. That’s part of making progress throughout the season. We need to learn from our mistakes. We can’t keep letting our mistakes hold us down and hold us back because we obviously have made similar mistakes in different forms or fashions. The only ones who are going to get us out of the hole are us as a football team. We knew we needed to play the game a certain way today and we did not get that done.”
A lot of the blame on offense can be attributed to injuries. In addition to Prescott, the team faced Washington without four offensive lineman expected to start the season in tackles La’el Collins and Tyron Smith, center Joe Looney and guard Zack Martin.
The backups were no match for a dominant Washington defensive line featuring four first-round picks. Dalton and DiNucci were sacked six times and completed a combined 11 of 22 passes for 114 yards. The Cowboys scored their fewest points since a 23-0 Week 15 loss to the Indianapolis Colts in 2018.
The poor play was contagious. Other miscues included Elliott dropping a pitch and rookie receiver CeeDee Lamb dropping two passes and killing a drive with a false start.
“Very frustrating. I don’t even know what else to say,” said Lamb, whose one 1-yard reception on the day meant that he saw his six-game streak of at least five catches to start his career come to an end. (Lamb was the first player in NFL history to start his career with six such games.) “I definitely didn’t do my job,” he said. “Had one too many drops, couldn’t contribute to the offense, couldn’t contribute to any yards.”
If you’re looking for small victories, consider this: Elliott didn’t fumble, but had just 45 yards on 12 carries and did play a role in that Dalton interception. “Just, how [expletive] this year has been. Just how bad this year has been,” said Elliott when asked what was going through his mind watching Dalton get knocked out of the game two week after Prescott was lost for the season.
“We just gotta stick together,” Elliott added. “During these turns we gotta stick together. We gotta have each other’s back. We just gotta be better, execute the game plan and play better football.”
The defense gets credit for finally keeping an opponent under 34 points, stopping a streak of six games. But the run defense, which ranks second to last in the NFL, continued to give up yards by the bushel.
Rookie Antonio Gibson rushed 20 times for 128 yards as Washington tallied a season-high 208 yards on 39 carries. It marked the first time this season for Washington to have a rusher with more than 60 yards in a game. And quarterback Kyle Allen tossed touchdown passes of 52 yards to a wide-open Terry McLaurin and 15-yards to Logan Thomas.
“I mean, we didn’t play well enough obviously,” McCarthy said of the run defense. “The thing that disappointed me is the yards after contact. There were times that I felt that our gap integrity was pretty good, but there were too many yards after contact.”
That also speaks to a lack of passion and a lack of fight.
“We need more belief and more high spirits around this team, and really more fight. That’s really, I feel like, one of our weaknesses,” said defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence. “We need to build a stronger backbone, fight [to] make sure that we brought everything possible to come out with a victory.”
The Cowboys (2-5) dropped to a second-place tie in the NFC East with Washington. They play at the division-leading Philadelphia Eagles (2-4-1) next Sunday in hopes of snapping a three-game losing streak and regaining their foothold in the division race.
McCarthy said doesn’t plan to make any changes in scheme or players and hasn’t thought about any staff changes, particularly with much-maligned defensive coordinator Mike Nolan. What he does know is that, “we need to be much better and we’re running out of time.”
Of course, time might be up if Dalton remains in concussion protocol and the Cowboys are forced to start DiNucci on the road against the Eagles next week.
This story was originally published October 25, 2020 at 7:46 PM.
