Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys’ terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
First, the good news: Dak Prescott’s right calf strain is just fine.
Now for everything else: The Dallas Cowboys, playing their first home game in four weeks, were listless from the outset of Sunday’s contest and hopeless throughout as the Denver Broncos out-played, out-coached and out-muscled this formerly high-flying team in shocking fashion.
The record will show that the final score was a 30-16 shellacking, but that may not capture the depths of this embarrassing defeat, which also ended the Cowboys’ (6-2) six-game winning streak.
Prescott, who missed last Sunday’s 20-16 victory against the Vikings in Minnesota Vikings for precautionary reasons with a lingering calf strain, ran and moved without issue, but he looked anything but big-game ready.
“Definitely shocked,” Prescott said. “They whupped us in every aspect. They beat us. That’s not something you ever think about or every envision happening. They were more physical than us. I think it’s the first time all year we weren’t the more physical team. We didn’t throw or catch the ball as we normally do. It wasn’t our best performance by any means, obviously our worst of the year.”
It was certainly Prescott’s worst performance of the season. He entered the game, having thrown at least three touchdown passes in a team-record four straight games. But he was off-kilter against the Broncos (5-4) and he said it had nothing to do with the calf strain itself or the layoff.
Prescott finished 19-of-39 passing for 232 yards with two meaningless touchdowns late in the fourth quarter when the Cowboys were down 30-0. Prescott was just 5 of 14 in the first half (35.7%), the worst first-half completion percentage of his career.
He was rusty throwing the ball and he was failed by his receivers, who had three dropped passes, and an offensive line that couldn’t keep the Broncos pass rushers out of his face.
The offense, which came into the game first in the NFL in yards and third in scoring, failed four times on fourth downs. The second of which pretty much encapsulated Prescott’s day.
On 4th-and-2 from the Broncos’ 20, Prescott short hopped a ball to a wide-open Cedrick Wilson that might have turned into a touchdown and given the Cowboys 7-0 lead in the first quarter.
“I think I got ready to throw it on the crossing route, saw that guy’s hands up and I think I just tried to change my arm angle at the last second and threw one at his ankles,” Prescott said. “I don’t miss those throws. It pisses me off when I miss a throw like that. I think it just changed the whole way that this game plays and goes from there if I complete that and we’re able to stay on the field.”
The Broncos used the momentum to march 80 yards for their first score and they never looked back.
A Cowboys defense offered little resistance against an average Broncos offense that came into the game ranked 21st in the league, yet quarterback Teddy Bridgewater passed for 249 yards and a touchdown and running backs Jevonte Williams and Melvin Gordon bullied them on the ground for 190 combined yards.
The Broncos were four of six on third down in the first half and converted eight of 15 in the game, one week after the Cowboys limited the Vikings to just one of 13 third downs in a shocking victory with Cooper Rush in at quarterback for Prescott.
Team owner Jerry Jones said the listless performance was inexplicable, considering the emotion the Cowboys played with last week.
“It seemed like we were mentally readier for it last week than we were this week,” Jones said. “It doesn’t shock me that our defense had such a challenge, especially near the end of the game because they were out there so much. I was shocked how effective Denver’s defense was against our offense.”
Down 30-0, Prescott and the Cowboys avoided the shutout with a 5-yard touchdown pass to Malik Turner with 4:08 to go and two-point conversion. He tossed another short touchdown pass to Turner to finish the scoring but the game had long been over.
The most telling occurrence what kind of day it was came right after halftime with the Cowboys down 16-0.
Turner blocked a Broncos punt on the opening drive of the third quarter to seemingly give the Cowboys a spark with a short field. But because cornerback Nahshon Wright touched it in an attempt to recover beyond the line of scrimmage, the Broncos got the ball back on a recovery.
A shell-shocked Cowboys defense gave up a 30-yard run two plays later when Williams ran through a host of would-be tacklers who seemingly gave up on the play. The Broncos converted a 27-yard field goal and a 19-0 lead.
“It’s the height of disappointment, putting the cake out in front of you, and letting you put your finger in the icing and then turn around and taking [the cake away],” Jones said of not getting the ball on the blocked punt. “The bottom line is let’s give them what they got. This team, if it’s what we all hope and think these guys are, they’ll take this loss and learn from it and try to come back and get better.”
It was the first loss at home for the Cowboys after opening the season 3-0 at AT&T Stadium, winning by a combined score of 121-69 against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Carolina Panthers and New York Giants.
The Cowboys, who still have a commanding lead in the NFC East, will get a chance to regroup next Sunday at AT&T Stadium against the Atlanta Falcons (4-4).
This was the worst loss of the Mike McCarthy era, much worse than the 38-10 setback to the Arizona Cardinals last season in the first game after Prescott’s season-ending ankle injury.
But this is a different team, one that has Super Bowl aspirations. The question raised Sunday: Did the Broncos expose the Cowboys or were the Cowboys too full of themselves?
“Had concern Wednesday, as far as how we’ve come off some successful weeks and the message was ‘don’t take the cheese,’” coach Mike McCarthy said. “And frankly we were out-coached, we were out-played, all the way through. This is the first time I’ve felt clearly our energy didn’t exceed our opponent, and that’s disappointing. We just weren’t the more physical team today. I thought it showed up.”
This story was originally published November 7, 2021 at 3:08 PM.
