Did Mike McDaniel, Dolphins just expose Cowboys’ playoff vulnerability?

Mike McDaniel said what the Dallas Cowboys don’t want to believe.

That narrative that McDaniel’s Miami Dolphins couldn’t beat an opponent with a winning record? The narrative that lingered because … the Dolphins, through 15 weeks, had not beaten an opponent with a winning record?

“It’s like, yeah, we haven’t beaten a team with a winning record so we’re vulnerable to that,” McDaniel said Sunday after a 22-20 win over the Dallas Cowboys broke the streak. “All the things that [we] haven’t done, should we really be entitled to blind faith before we do it?”

McDaniel, not a member of the Cowboys, described the chatter accordingly.

But after the Cowboys’ first consecutive losses of the season dropped them to 10-5, McDaniel’s question was à propos for his opponent.

Sure, the Cowboys are at minimum a very good team that already clinched a playoff berth last week.

Also: The Cowboys have lost every road game against .500-plus opponents and another against a sub-.500 team.

Head coach Mike McCarthy described the Cowboys’ loss in Buffalo last week as a “wake-up call.” He acknowledged in Miami that his team needs to play better on the road and “road warriors we will be.”

“We can play better than we did today,” McCarthy said. “And to me, that’s exciting.”

McCarthy’s assertion, in juxtaposition with McDaniel’s comments, begs the question: If the Cowboys can play better on the road against playoff-caliber teams, why haven’t they? And if they haven’t, should onlookers believe that they can?

Dak Prescott: ‘Demoralizing isn’t quite the word’

Dallas’ road losses have varied in recipe.

Defensively, the Cowboys held the Dolphins to fewer points than their opponents in any other road loss. There was reason to appreciate a defensive effort that limited the league’s top scoring offense to 9.5 points fewer than its 31.5 average; that allowed just one touchdown in four red-zone trips (25%) when the Dolphins rank second in the league with a whopping 68% success rate.

A week after letting the Buffalo Bills run loose for 266 yards, Dallas ceded 91 to Miami. The defense bent but didn’t break as it protected the red zone but also failed to take away the ball, went more than 48 minutes without a sack and failed to stop the game-winning drive.

“I think as a defense, we take accountability because we pride ourselves on getting the ball back and we didn’t do a good enough job of that,” edge rusher Micah Parsons said.

Realistically, the Cowboys’ bigger concerns Sunday were on offense.

Dallas started strong after electing to receive, tracking 73 yards on 15 plays across 7:43 with relative ease. Then, a promising drive ended in the red-zone follies that have continued to resurface throughout Dallas’ season. Running back Tony Pollard managed to get his body but not the ball over the goal line. The Cowboys attempted to ride fullback Hunter Luepke’s hot hand on first-and-goal, Prescott and Luepke instead fumbling the handoff.

How demoralizing was that lost fumble?

“It sucks, but demoralizing isn’t quite the word,” Prescott said. “You’ve got to move on fast, understand it’s the first drive of the game, it’s a long game ahead and if that did demoralize us, we wouldn’t have came back and responded the way that we did in that second drive.”

The Cowboys briefly took a first-half lead when receiver CeeDee Lamb lined up in the slot to Prescott’s left, cutting in toward the middle before shifting to his running back mode as he sped upfield around one defender and inside another. Lamb compiled a 49-yard, go-ahead touchdown.

Then, the Cowboys’ best weapon didn’t touch the ball once in the second and third quarters. Prescott instead struggled to find open pass-catchers as Miami defenders thoroughly overpowered the Cowboys at the line of scrimmage. Dallas struggled to throw at all in the second quarter, and none of Prescott’s eight third-quarter targets headed Lamb’s way. Penalties and sacks killed drives.

Lamb’s disappearance was reminiscent of the Cowboys’ 42-10 loss at the San Francisco 49ers in Week 5, a trend that triggered Lamb’s explosion in the offense to the tune of four straight 100-yard games over the following month.

McCarthy attributed the stalls to protection issues on a night when Prescott was hit 12 times, and rushers, including Bradley Chubb, were repeatedly pursuing Prescott completely unblocked.

Prescott credited Dolphins defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s play calls taking Lamb out of the game after his 93-yard, one-touchdown first quarter.

“You’re playing a defensive coordinator over there who’s been around for a long time and he’s going to find ways to slow you down and maybe fog my reads up a little bit when it comes to [Lamb’s] side,” Prescott said. “Got him some more catches, obviously, late, but that’s on us as well: finding a way that even when that happens, get him more catches.

“That’s on my lap. So, yeah. We’ll get better.”

Sunday, Dallas did. But it was too late.

Cowboys lost more than just a game as they cede postseason advantage to Eagles

By game’s end, the Cowboys seemed disappointed but more steely than devastated by the loss.

“This one sucks,” Prescott said. “It hurts, especially in the manner that we lost this one. But the confidence is high. We understand that we can. Obviously, we haven’t done it. But we will.”

The confidence stemmed from a late-game comeback, Prescott keeping the Cowboys alive on a 17-play, fourth-quarter drive that included a fourth-and-2 conversion, an 8-yard completion with a defender wrapped around him, and a cross-body touchdown toss to Brandin Cooks’ waiting back shoulder.

After trailing all of the third quarter and most of the fourth, the Cowboys regained a lead with 3:27 to play. Lamb ultimately finished with 118 yards. But the defense didn’t hold.

Rather than demonstrating complementary football, Dallas’ units traded turns clicking.

They battled more than they had in San Francisco or Buffalo, and about as much as they did in Philadelphia.

But the Philadelphia series, which ended with the Cowboys’ seventh home win in seven tries, is telling.

Because Sunday’s loss didn’t just mark another insufficient traveling effort in the regular season. It also increased the chances that Dallas’ road to the Super Bowl will go exclusively through road venues.

The Cowboys led the NFC East, albeit without control, entering the weekend. They now trail the Eagles in the division, Philadelphia’s chance of clinching the division and thus a home playoff game at 78%, per The New York Times' playoff predictor.

“Regardless if we road or home, we got to win,” defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence said. “Point blank period.

“This ain’t the last y’all are gonna see us.”

But will the last be in the wild-card round or the divisional round, the furthest Dallas has advanced in 28 seasons?

The Cowboys haven’t beat a good team on the road this year. They haven’t advanced to the NFC championship game and certainly not the Super Bowl since the 1995 season.

No doubt they’ll be eager to disprove both, but the questions they’ll face entering this stretch will be fair.

McDaniels’ question will echo.

“Should we really be entitled to blind faith before we do it?”