Nomentum: Cowboys enter playoffs with no positives, fall 26-6 to Commanders

It’s always an interesting question when a team’s playoff situation is all but assured. The Dallas Cowboys entered Week 18 with a very slim chance at winning the NFC East, but they did have a chance if they beat Washington in Washington. They’d also need the Philadelphia Eagles to lose their third game in a row, playing against a New York Giants squad that was going to rest almost all of their key guys.

But because there was a chance, head coach Mike McCarthy vowed to play his starters when they took on the already-eliminated Commanders. The Commanders were starting a rookie QB who had yet to take a snap in his career in Sam Howell. What should have been a cake walk win ended up being the worst of all scenarios. Dallas made mistake after mistake and was absolutely handled in all three phases, falling 26-6.

Dak Prescott's worst game

The Cowboys’ quarterback has had a really good year except for a bunch of interceptions, but this game was a ridiculous failure. Prescott threw another Pick-6, after the Commanders dropped a sure score the prior play, and finished 14 for 37 for just 128 yards. His completion rate was 37.8%, the worst of his career.

Earlier in the week we wrote about the reason for his miscues being directly correlated to not having a calm mind in the pocket thanks to poor offensive line play. That was the case on Sunday as he was seeing ghosts from the start as Connor McGovern played center for the first start of his career. Tyler Biadasz will hopefully be able to play next week and bring some stability back to the unit.

Run game wasn't working either

There was no help from the run game, either, as it continues to struggle ever since Terence Steele was lost for the season. Tony Pollard had just seven carries for 19 yards and Ezekiel Elliott was even worse with eight carries for just 10 yards.

Jack Del Rio always has his way with the Dallas run game, but this was the worst in a long time and very concerning with another stout DL on the way with the Bucs.

They ended up with 64 rushing yards, two more than their Week 4 meeting and second-worst of the year.

Special Teams disasters

The teams unit didn’t help. On the opening kick, a hold put Dallas in horrible field goal position. After failing to move past midfield, former Pro Bowl punter Bryan Anger dropped the snap and gave Washington great field position that lead to a 7-0 lead. Later, Kavontae Turpin muffed a fair catch and the refs missed the call and allowed Washington to recover.

Later, Brett Maher missed an extra point on Dallas’ only score of the game.

Mistake after mistake from the most consistent part of the team.

Cornerback play was horrid

Finally, the Cowboys are still searching for solutions opposite Trevon Diggs.

With Kelvin Joseph being benched, Dallas wasn’t too enthusiastic about how Nahshon Wright played in his stead. Several weeks ago the club signed Treyvon Mullen and gave him a shot. It didn’t work. Mullen was beaten consistently, getting called for defensive pass interference on a big throw and he should’ve been called for a second but got lucky. Later he was beaten for a 52-yard completion to Terry McLaurin and on none of them did he ever turn his head around to locate the ball.

To make matters worse, rookie DaRon Bland suffered a chest injury and didn’t return for the second half.

Not ideal going into a matchup against Tom Brady, Mike Evans and Chris Godwin.

Just did everything wrong

The Cowboys totaled just 182 yards on offense and couldn’t convert on third downs, going just 4 of 18 on the day. The game plan was vanilla, Dallas appeared to think they’d be able to trim down their offense and still be good enough as if the Commanders were going to roll over for them.

That didn’t happen and now it’s going to be a miserable week ahead of the playoff trip to Tampa Bay.

Story originally appeared on Cowboys Wire