Over the last two seasons, the inside joke about the Dallas Cowboys has been that offensive coordinator Kellen Moore is there to call brilliant stuff on offense, defensive coordinator Dan Quinn is there to call brilliant stuff on defense, and head coach Mike McCarthy is there to mangle the clock, get things situationally wrong, and eat sandwiches.
It’s a cruel narrative, but after Dallas’ 19-12 loss in the divisional round to the San Francisco 49ers, it kinda rings true. Head coaches must understand every aspect of the game, and they must make sure their players are trained to the point of instinct on the little things that can either give you victories, or have you holding your guts in pain after an agonizing loss.
McCarthy’s decisions in this game were… odd, at best. Let’s start with the decision to keep kicker Brett Maher as the starter. Maher had famously missed four extra points in Dallas’ wild-card win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Cowboys had an entire week to come up with an alternate plan. Instead, Maher had an extra point blocked which would have been a miss if it hadn’t, and there were multiple instances in which the Cowboys might have had field goals to try, and didn’t. Dallas converted both of its fourth-down attempts in the game, but that wasn’t the larger issue.
Then, there was the decision to punt from the Dallas 18-yard line after Dak Prescott took a third-down sack with 2:50 left in the game. Fine, but the Cowboys ran the clock down to 2:11 before Brian Anger punted the ball, and if you wanted to get the ball back, that was at least one extra play you just wasted.
The Cowboys’ defense did get the ball back, but when Mitch Wishnowsky punted the ball back to Dallas, there were just 51 seconds left in the game. The Cowboys wouldn’t have had that much time had 49ers running back Elijah Mitchell not run out of bounds at the end of his 13-yard run with 1:53 left in the game. That basically gave Dallas an extra time out when they desperately needed it.
So, now, the Cowboys had first-and-10 from their own six-yard line with 45 seconds left, no timeouts, down by seven points, and in obvious need of a touchdown. Two sideline passes to tight end Dalton Schultz were problematic on that final Dallas drive — one in which Schultz didn’t realize that he had to be moving forward when he went out of bounds, which kept the clock running with, and another in which Schultz failed to get his second foot in bounds, resulting in an incompletion after review.
After that play, Dallas had six seconds left, and one play left in their quiver, from their own 24-yard line. The resulting play probably should have been something like the Fumblerooski or the Annexation of Puerto Rico, but instead, there was… well, whatever this was.
THIS DEFENSE IS DIFFERENT.
📺 #DALvsSF on @NFLonFOX
📱 NFL+ https://t.co/KTh0i4oaLh pic.twitter.com/2bbjytNOQG— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) January 23, 2023
With running back Ezekiel Elliott at center, Prescott threw an eight-yard pass to KaVontae Turpin, and thus endeth the game.
There are a lot of little things — subtle details — that go into a win or a loss. And in this case, it was Mike McCarthy’s inability to have a handle on those subtleties, from preseason design and implementation to postseason finality, that sunk his team. Not for the first time by any means, but in this case, one of the most obvious and crushing set of circumstances.