The San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys played to the dumbest possible finish

Stupid turnovers? Check. Brain fart penalties? A whole bunch. Awful playcalls? TONS.

Sunday’s Wild Card game between the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys looked like a blowout at first. Then it looked like a barnburner. Then it looked like the perfect opportunity for Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy to devastate his team’s fans once more.

This proved to be the perfect storm for the dumbest finish of the 2022 NFL Playoffs.

The final quarter had something for everyone. Stupid turnovers? Check. Brain fart penalties? A whole bunch. Awful playcalls? TONS. This was, in fact, a symphony of regret that eventually allowed San Francisco to escape with a 23-17 victory and a lingering foreboding sense of doom that will never dissipate.

Let’s start with the 49ers failure that started the fourth. McCarthy, trailing by 16, called the world’s most obvious fake punt. It succeeded because San Francisco’s special teams are a disaster for everyone involved but Robbie Gould:

Five plays later, he opted for a field goal on fourth-and-7, turning a game in which he’d need two touchdowns in the final 12 minutes into a game … in which he’d need two touchdowns in the final 12 minutes. And this nearly paid off!

Four plays later, Jimmy Garoppolo reminded the world why the Niners traded three first round picks to draft an FCS quarterback to replace him by unleashing this nightmare on the Bay Area:

The Cowboys scored on the ensuing drive to make it 23-17. It looked as though they’d get the ball back with roughly 4:30 to play and all their timeouts when Garoppolo’s third-and-12 pass into coverage fell incomplete. Instead, San Francisco earned a free first down because Neville Gallimore got every penny’s worth out of an “illegal hands to the face” penalty.

Still, Dallas recovered to get the ball back with 2:51 to play. A big strike to tight end Dalton Schultz moved the Cowboys to midfield. Dak Prescott looked to have uncorked a late-game miracle when launched a deep ball to an open Cedrick Wilson against a cover-0 blitz, but Wilson’s legs gave out from under him at the worse possible moment. The Cowboys turned the ball over on downs with 1:42 to play.

Brutal, but understandable! What happened next was not. Dallas had three timeouts and a chance to get the ball back, but immediately hampered its comeback with a defensive holding call that gifted the Niners a free first down — the team’s second in as many drives. Two stops and a nine-yard Deebo Samuel run set up 4th-and-inches with the game on the line.

Garoppolo took the snap, dove forward, and sealed the game.

Except he didn’t, because even though there was plenty of time left on the play clock, he had the ball snapped before in-motion tackle Trent Williams could get set:

False start. Five yard penalty, repeat fourth down. On came the punting unit. Prescott had one more chance to lead a comeback. He trailed 23-17 with zero timeouts and 32 seconds on the clock at his own 20. His win probability, per ESPN, clocked in at 0.1 percent.

But ESPN didn’t account for San Francisco’s secondary and its willingness to leave the sidelines completely uncovered. Prescott moved the ball to midfield with 14 seconds left. With proper clock management, he could squeeze three more plays into the game in hopes of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

This was not what Dak Prescott did. It was, in fact, the opposite of proper clock management:

A quarterback draw with 14 seconds left bled the clock dry when the officiating crew couldn’t get in position in time to allow Prescott to spike the ball. Even if it had, it would have been tremendously close.

This was not an audible. This was not Prescott going rogue. This is a play McCarthy called in good conscience and not because he’s secretly trying to get fired. Or, at least, that’s his cover story.

Good god. The Cowboys galaxy-brained their way through the end of a desperation drive. They lost their chance at a miracle comeback as a result.

It was a play that somehow washed over the awful Garoppolo decisions that preceded it. It was enough to keep Handsome James undefeated in non-Super Bowl playoff games in his career. San Francisco and Dallas took turns trying to prove whose untrustworthy agent was worse: Garoppolo or McCarthy.

Ultimately, the veteran head coach won out by losing. And now the Cowboys have a new “worst playoff loss” story to talk about at the bar for decades to come.

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