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David Hermann
dallas cowboys insider
Think of it like a social experiment rather than a humiliating loss. Practice debating between rust vs. rest and the power of positive momentum. The Dallas Cowboys, long ago convinced of their postseason status, finished their 2022 campaign as poorly as humanly possible on Sunday. Despite starting the day with a shot, they fell to one of their worst performances of the season with a 26-6 loss to Washington.
Now comes the fun part. The Cowboys have to prepare for a wild card trip to face NFC South champions Tampa Bay, so does it make sense to move forward? It’s hard to feel a lot of confidence. Pick your favorite side of the team. Dallas struggled on Sunday.
Their quarterback was terrible. Dak Prescott completed his 38% of passes for just 128 yards. Prescott, who had his worst performance since returning from a thumb injury in October, looked uncomfortable all day and was unable to establish a rhythm.
His running game did him no favors as the Cowboys averaged only 2.4 yards per attempt on the ground. ran the ball seven times for the , recording just 10 yards in the process.
The Dallas special teams also picked a bad day to struggle. Bryan Unger set the tone for a frustrating afternoon when he bobbled the first punt of the day, giving Washington a short field for an early touchdown, before Kavontae Turpin punted his 2016 1-0 win before the end of the day. Muffed the return and Brett Maher missed the extra point.
The Cowboys’ defense put in its best performance of an unforgettable day, but still had a familiar breakdown in pass coverage.
I’ve spelled out the main points. By any metric imaginable, this was ironically the Cowboys’ worst performance since he lost 19-3 in Week 1. To the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, ironically.
An interesting contrast to 2022. If you recall, at this point a year ago, the Cowboys entered the postseason as hotly as possible. They played the starter in a largely meaningless game in Philadelphia, racking up 475 yards in his 51-26 demolition for the Eagles. They didn’t translate in the slightest after a week as they were treated so badly by San Francisco for their one-off playoff exit.
Is there any other way it could work? Can the Cowboys turn the page from such a blatant no-show to fix their playoff fate?
That’s the story throughout the regular season. They bounced back from a terrible loss to Tampa Bay with a dramatic victory over Cincinnati. What happened after the overtime loss at Lambeau Field?his 3-for-40 shot for the Vikings heading into the playoffs. And, of course, the baffling loss in Jacksonville three weeks ago was followed by a victory over the Eagles on Christmas Eve.
The obvious counter-argument is that the regular season is over. The next step is the playoffs where none of the approaches seem to work. The Cowboys suffered in a loss to San Francisco last year, but when they ended the regular season with a loss, they also lost his last four playoff games. .his one overall seed in the NFC.
Beauty is on the lookout this week as the Cowboys prepare for one of the most engaging matchups in the Wildcard round.
This team is 12-5, better than .500 against the team that managed the winning record. They’re also bad enough to blow the door on two of those five losses and give up a big second-half lead on the other two. Although he lost the fight, he managed a record of 5-2 in those matches.
No one illustrates that contradiction better than Prescott. Since his return, he has led one of the league’s most efficient and explosive offenses, in which span he recorded 8 wins and 3 losses, averaging 32 points per game. At the same time, Sunday will be his seventh straight game with an interception and his 15th overall.
All of this has been true throughout the year, so it could be true. The difference now is that the Cowboys are out of the regular season games to sort them out. We will – much sooner than anyone would have hoped.
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David Helman covers the Dallas Cowboys for FOX Sports. He previously spent nine his seasons covering the Cowboys on the team’s official website. In 2018, he won a regional Emmy Award for producing “Dak Prescott: A Family Reunion” about the quarterback era in Mississippi.Follow him on Twitter. @David Hermann_.
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