‘We get to suck on that all week’: Cowboys look for quick answers after Week 18 wipeout
For as dumbfounded as most Cowboys fans were watching the team sleepwalk through their season-ending 26-6 loss to Washington, the players and coaches found themselves at even more of a loss for words.
“Not very good at all,” head coach Mike McCarthy said to open his postgame press conference. “We played poorly.”
“Very difficult,” running back Ezekiel Elliott added.
“If we do this again,” guard Zack Martin commented, “we’ll be sitting at home next week.”
“I honestly don’t know where you can start,” offered linebacker Micah Parsons.
“That was as thorough a butt-kicking as we’ve had this year,” owner Jerry Jones told reporters.
“It was terrible, guys,” McCarthy went on to reporters. “I don’t know how to keep saying it: very disappointing, poor. You guys have got big vocabularies; go for it.”
Dak Prescott opted instead for a one-word summary, one that can’t be re-printed on a reputable website.
It was about the only thing he was accurate on for the day.
A 45.8 passer rating for Prescott. Just 64 team rushing yards. Four-of-18 on third downs. An average of 2.8 yards per offensive play. Ten punts. No play longer than 15 yards. Getting outpassed by a rookie in his first start. Only one offensive series with double-digit plays. Giving up nearly five yards per play. Half a dozen penalties. A missed extra point, a muffed punt, and a fumble by the punter, for heaven’s sake.
Pick the stat or category, and Dallas likely came up on the short end, by a lot. There is a ton for the Cowboys to learn from, in what was undoubtedly their worst outing of the year.
“We get to suck on that all week,” Jones said. “And if that doesn’t make you want to get ready to go in about six, seven days, nothing else will.”
The Cowboys will certainly need to get over their Landover lemon quickly, but McCarthy wants to make sure the lessons get through.
“I’m not a burn-the-tape guy,” McCarthy explained. “So we’re not flushing this away and not being accountable for it. Let’s just make that real clear. We’ll watch it on the plane, we’ll watch it on the bus ride, and we’ll make sure it’ll be cleaned up.”
Of perhaps most significant concern was Prescott’s 14-of-27 passing day that included his career-worst 15th interception and yet another pick-six (his third in four games) en route to the offense’s lowest net-yardage total since October 2020.
“Completely not who we are,” Prescott said in his Sunday press conference. “I don’t think I’ve seen us like that in damn sure the last two years.”
The veteran quarterback kicked off the 2022 campaign with one of his poorest statistical outings ever. He bookended it with one that was even worse, featuring his lowest completion percentage (37.84%) as a pro.
“This is not about one guy,” McCarthy was quick to point out. “You can’t look at our offensive performance and blame it on one guy. There’s plenty to go around.”
If there is a silver lining, it’s that ultimately, the Week 18 loss didn’t end up mattering. By virtue of the Eagles’ and 49ers’ wins, Dallas remains right where they started Sunday: locked in to the NFC’s No. 5 seed and a first-round rematch with Tom Brady and the Buccaneers.
“I’m thrilled that we didn’t have to look over there and the Philadelphia game and look at the San Francisco game and say, ‘Boy, did we mess up,'” Jones said.
But instead of playing their best football or even establishing some momentum heading into the playoffs, as they had talked about all week, the Cowboys are suddenly scrambling for answers, wondering if Sunday was a one-off anomaly… or the other shoe dropping on growing problems that have been trying to trip the team up for weeks.
When it came to talk of dramatically turning things around before Monday night, the Cowboys had plenty to say.
“I think you can make a case,” Jones said of the humbling loss possibly being exactly what the team needed heading into the tournament. “I’m not so sure what is the most motivational thing a week before you go out there.”
“I think everyone has a fall,” opined Parsons. “And there’s a rise in every movie. So hopefully this was our fall so we can rise up and next week, get it together.”
“I think it’s like a lot of things in life: when you get kicked in the ass or punched in the mouth, you have a chance to respond. And I have great confidence in our football team that we will respond,” McCarthy said.
So let these words be the last on Week 18’s loss that will (hopefully) be forgotten as The One That Shall Not Be Spoken Of.
Because while they needed a thesaurus to describe how thoroughly awful their Sunday wipeout in Washington was… by Monday, the Cowboys will have already turned the page.
“It’s about beating Tampa,” McCarthy assured. “That’s all we’ll be thinking about when those wheels touch down.”
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