For the duration of Sunday night’s blowout in the Bay, the Cowboys had no answers whatsoever for the 49ers.
Shortly after the 42-10 trouncing, though, Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb repeatedly had the same bewildered reply.
“What’s the identity of this offense?” Lamb was asked at his locker.
“I don’t know,” came his dejected response.
“Should you, five weeks into the season?”
“I guess so. I don’t know.”
“How do you guys find it?”
“I don’t know.”
Lamb and the Cowboys offense was similarly flummoxed for the entire night in what was supposed to be a clash of evenly-matched NFC powers. Instead, the most eagerly-anticipated showdown of the young 2023 season turned into a one-sided affair right from the jump and stayed that way for three hours.
Week 5’s embarrassing defeat was far worse than the playoff losses suffered at the hands of the 49ers in consecutive years. For all who believed the Cowboys had made the necessary offseason changes to finally get that red-and-gold monkey off the team’s back, Sunday’s primetime humiliation left them grasping to make sense of what had just happened.
“How did it get away from you guys tonight?” Lamb was asked.
“Wish I could tell you,” was all the visibly dejected receiver could offer. “Wish I could tell you.”
The cold, hard stats certainly say plenty about the offense’s ineffectiveness. They registered just eight first downs all night and didn’t get their first until their fifth possession. Their average drive started at their own 21, lasted fewer than four plays, and gained a pitiful 15 yards. They were held to under 200 yards of total offense. They never took a snap from any closer than 26 yards to the 49ers end zone. They held the ball for less than 23 minutes.
That’s a far cry from the kind of numbers Dallas put up in easy, commanding wins over the Giants, Jets, and Patriots. The team’s point average in those three games: 36.
But the revamped offense, now under the play-calling direction of head coach Mike McCarthy, scored just 10 against San Francisco in a game that coaches and players alike had openly called a “measuring stick.”
“We’ve got to be complete,” Lamb put it bluntly. “We can’t go out there one week and look like a superteam and then the following week, [expletive] the bed.”
Lamb, who is under contract through 2024 but has been the subject of recent extension talks in Dallas, led the team with just 49 receiving yards, hauling in four catches on five targets. Replays showed him to be open far more frequently than that. His body language- on the field, on the sideline, and in the locker room- made his frustration evident.
My biggest takeaway from this game is just how frustrated CeeDee Lamb is right now, and I don't think anyone blames him for that frustration.
Everyone hates losing, but his unhappiness with the team's play recently is palpable. pic.twitter.com/BhUTS7YJ2O
— Bobby Belt (@BobbyBeltTX) October 9, 2023
“They did a phenomenal job, playing two-high,” Lamb told reporters of San Francisco’s defense. “They schemed well. They got after the quarterback a little bit. Overall, we couldn’t get the offense going. We had plenty of three-and-outs.”
Four. Dallas had four three-and-outs, all in the first half while the score was still relatively close.
After the break, quarterback Dak Prescott threw interceptions on three straight possessions, trying to play catch-up, to end drives of three, two, and three plays.
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Now Lamb, Prescott, McCarthy, and the Dallas offense have no choice but to go back to the drawing board to try to find some new answers, starting with another West Coast trip this weekend to face the Chargers and former OC Kellen Moore.
Lamb knows it will take more than their next week of practice, more than their next win to get past this gut-punch failure in San Francisco.
“We’ve got 12 other games to compete in,” he observed.
But if the Cowboys offense doesn’t find some answers- soon- on how to be consistent performers, they’ll be at a loss for far more than words.
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