Tag: Dallas Cowboys vs San Francisco 49ers

3 valuable lessons learned from the 49ers dismantling the Cowboys

The sky isn’t falling and the season isn’t over. It’s a reality check, but in the Cowboys horrific loss to the 49ers these lessons were learned. | From @ReidDHanson

It’s difficult to glean anything positive following a loss like the Cowboys suffered Sunday night in Santa Clara. The 49ers, Dallas’ boogieman for going on three seasons, once again established the hierarchy in the NFC, beating the Cowboys 42-10.

Now probably isn’t the time for positive takeaways anyway. Moments such as these are meant to humble. It’s the only way to accept what’s really wrong and set a plan to fix it. Besides, being on the business end of a 40-burger is supposed to induce some soul-searching.

It takes a team effort to lose that magnificently. It required offensive ineptitude, defensive turbulence and immaturity, and sadly key injuries to special teams.

One play wasn’t the issue. One player wasn’t the reason. The issues were bigger than that. But amidst the pain of the loss some valuable lessons were learned. And if acted on, the Cowboys could actually grow from such a painful event.

3 takeaways from Cowboys humiliating loss include questioning Prescott

The Cowboys have more questions than answers and here are the biggest takeaways from the debacle. | From @cdpiglet

The Dallas Cowboys did plenty of talking heading into Sunday’s matchup with the San Francisco 49ers. The players, coaches, and front office all revealed how important this game was. They all were motivated by facing the team that eliminated them the past two postseasons.

From improving offensive play calling and playmaking to bulking up the run defense, the entire offseason surrounded a getting another shot. This Cowboys team believed that they can beat any team in the league, but they had to find a way to get over the hump that was San Francisco. What does a team take away from a game that made it seem like climbing that hill is more climbing Mount Everest?

4 Downs: Cowboys embarrassed themselves in Week 5

From @ToddBrock24f7: There was no shortage of moments that contributed to the 42-10 blowout by the Bay, but the Cowboys did it to themselves on these 4 plays.

Week 5’s Sunday night game was supposed to be a 15-round battle between NFC heavyweights. It didn’t take long, though, to figure out which boxer looked like a champ and which boxer would playing the chump.

The 49ers’ 42-10 beatdown of the Cowboys was one of the most lopsided finals in the storied history between the two franchises and the worst loss of the Mike McCarthy era in Dallas.

There are plenty of plays that Cowboys fans will point to as the moment they knew it was over. Some would pick the very first play from scrimmage, when a face mask call against Jayron Kearse was just the first time on the night Dallas would shoot themselves in the foot. Others will undoubtedly look at Dak Prescott’s three interceptions and think here we go again.

They’re not wrong. There were a multitude of moments that contributed to an absolutely embarrassing performance by the Cowboys, the kind that will have a significant portion of even the staunchest fanbase wondering just how wrong we all were about this team’s outlook.

But in the final analysis, here are our choices for the four plays that most accurately summed up the smackdown in San Fran.

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Report: Cowboys CB C.J. Goodwin may miss rest of season with pectoral tear

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys could be without the services of special teams ace C.J. Goodwin, who tore his left pectoral muscle during Sunday’s 42-10 loss.

The Cowboys suffered a humiliating defeat on their latest visit to San Francisco. Now, it appears, there’s injury to add to that insult.

Cowboys cornerback and special teams ace C.J. Goodwin tore his left pectoral muscle in the Week 5 loss, per a report from NFL insider Adam Schefter. He is expected to miss the remainder of the 2023 season, though there is apparently an option may have him back on the field sooner rather than later.

Goodwin made one tackle Sunday before exiting the game with what was described at first as a shoulder injury. He returned to action briefly but then appeared to tell special teams coordinator John Fassel that he wouldn’t be able to continue. Goodwin was later declared out for the rest of the game.

Cornerback Noah Igbinoghene took his place as special teams gunner.

Goodwin was scheduled to have an MRI on Monday, though early word Sunday night from inside the Levi’s Stadium locker room was that the injury was thought to be concerning.

By Monday afternoon, it was announced that there was a decision to be made regarding the muscle tear. Goodwin could have immediate surgery to repair the muscle and miss the rest of the season.

Alternatively, he and the team could elect to work on strengthening the area around the muscle, according to Michael Gehlken of the Dallas Morning News. If he rehabs himself back into playing shape, he could delay a surgical procedure until later.

Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy says Goodwin is “likely” headed to injured reserve, as per Clarence Hill Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. If placed there, he will have to miss at least four games.

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The 33-year-old joined the Cowboys during the 2018 season, a signing off the Bengals practice squad. He’s been a locker room leader and an integral part of the special teams unit since then, leading the Cowboys in special teams tackles for three consecutive years from 2019 to 2021. After finishing tied for second on the team in special teams tackles in 2022, Goodwin re-signed wit the club on a one-year contract in March; he had been promoted from the practice squad to the active roster prior to Week 3’s game in Arizona.

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Cowboys’ Lamb lost for answers on offense’s identity, consistency

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys had no answers for the 49ers. But after a 42-10 loss, CeeDee Lamb repeatedly had the same reply to questions about the offense.

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.

 

“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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Good, bad and ugly: Cowboys’ Prescott claimed to be motivated, he was not

There was too much bad and ugly football from the Cowboys in their Week 5 embarrassing loss to the 49ers. | From @KDDrummondNFL

This isn’t what the Dallas Cowboys envisioned when they talked all week how facing San Francisco was a measuring stick game. The 49ers embarrassed the Cowboys, 42-10, on Sunday Night Football and left no doubt how far away Dallas is from being Super Bowl contenders.

It didn’t take long for the 49ers to establish themselves as the better team, scoring on their first possession and shutting down the Cowboys’ offense for most of the first half.  The 49ers dominated on both sides of the ball and took full advantage of sloppy mistakes from Mike McCarthy’s team. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly in a disappointing loss to the 49ers in Week 5.

Don’t Look Away: Photos document Cowboys ineptness by the bay

Dallas needs to have the images of this pathetic performance etched into their memory, seared into their consciousness. So here’s the proof it happened how it happened. | From @KDDrummondNFL

Sometimes the medicine goes down easy. Hopefully, this isn’t one of those times. Cowboys Nation wakes up Monday morning absolutely dejected following the club’s performance in what they themselves billed as a statement game and measuring stick. The Cowboys traveled west of Dallas for the second time this season and for the second time this season they were embarrassed by an NFC West opponent.

While their three wins were enough to dismiss the performance in Arizona as looking past a weak opponent, their showing (or lack thereof) in San Francisco crystalizes this picture. Dallas is not good enough. It’s feast or famine with this club. When things are going right; when the playing surface is fast and they create turnovers they look like the best team in the league. But twice now, the club has been hit in the mouth and they wilted into the corner.

The 42-10 loss was the biggest defeat of Mike McCarthy’s tenure in Dallas and the worse since a 2013 blowout loss at the hands of the New Orleans Saints. It’s going to take a lot for the fanbase to move past this defeat and the players and coaches would be wise not to sweep this under the rug.

And while the 49ers appear to be the cream of the crop in the early stages of the 2023 NFL season, this will hardly be the last time Dallas has to play a strong opponent. Rather, this was the beginning of a gauntlet where the Cowboys will face off with some of the league’s best, including the Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, Detroit Lions and two contests against division rival Philadelphia.

Dallas needs to have the images of this pathetic performance etched into their memory, seared into their consciousness. So here’s the proof it happened how it happened.

Studs & Duds: Prescott, Cowboys safeties top list of disappointments in 42-10 loss

From @ToddBrock24f7: The list of duds was a long one, as the Cowboys stunk on both sides of the ball in a 42-10 Week 5 blowout at the hands of the 49ers.

It was supposed to be a tightly-contested clash of NFC superpowers, the most eagerly awaited game of the month-old 2023 season. It ended with the 49ers taking Dallas to the woodshed and sending them home with the worst and most humiliating Cowboys loss of the Mike McCarthy era.

The Cowboys were unequivocally dreadful in nearly every aspect of the 42-10 no-show. Dak Prescott & Co. didn’t move the chains until their fifth possession and had only one drive all night go longer than six plays and 39 yards. The supposedly elite defense, on the other hand, surrendered 25 first downs to the 49ers and let San Francisco hold the ball for over 37 minutes.

Narrowing the list of Cowboys “duds” down to just three names proved to be a Herculean task. Truth be told, there weren’t even three actual “studs” to be found, but for the sake of this weekly exercise, we’ve identified a few Dallas players who weren’t quite as awful as the rest of the imposters wearing blue and silver in Santa Clara on Sunday night.

Here are the studs (insert air quotes and big sarcastic eye roll here) and duds from Week 5’s whipping.

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Twitter reacts to Cowboys abysmal, embarassing loss to Brock Purdy’s 49ers

The Cowboys believed they were arriving to forge their identity. They believed they were there to exorcise their demons from the last two seasons. They believed they deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as the San Francisco 49ers. As a wise …

The Cowboys believed they were arriving to forge their identity. They believed they were there to exorcise their demons from the last two seasons. They believed they deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as the San Francisco 49ers. As a wise man once said, you can’t believe what you know.

Dallas did not know it in their hearts they belonged on the same field as the San Francisco 49ers and spent three hours on Sunday night fulfilling the fantasies of the large portion of America that tunes in to see if Dallas will lose. With a 42-10 whooping, the Cowboys fell to 3-2. A respectable record, but Dallas disrespected themselves with their abysmal showing.  Here’s how the Twitter world responded to the performance.

Cowboys weighed, measured, found wanting in 42-10 loss to 49ers

Aesthetically, Dallas’ performance calls into question their status as a contender. Mathematically and historically, too. | From @KDDrummondNFL

The Dallas Cowboys want to be contenders, but they certainly didn’t play as if they believed in themselves on Sunday night. That makes it hard for anyone else to believe in them. Returning to the scene of the crime, where they were eliminated from the postseason back in January, the Cowboys put up very little resistance as the 49ers confirmed their status as the NFL’s best team to this point in 2023.

It was a thorough whooping from start to finish, and it snowballed out of control rather early and became a total embarrassment before it was all over. If owner Jerry Jones thought this was a measuring stick game for his organization, the results were not good. The defense was horrible, the offense couldn’t convert first downs and then started turning the ball over. In the end, a 42-10 loss sends the Cowboys to 3-2 on the year.