Dallas Cowboys vs. San Francisco 49ers: 10 losers from the season-ending and humiliating loss

There are no winners for the Cowboys.

Whenever I think about a season ending for the Dallas Cowboys I always think about how much life we have to live until the next one starts.

Starting now we have to go through the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, March Madness, The Masters, the NBA Playoffs, the Stanley Cup Playoffs, time springing forward, the summer, July 4th, birthdays, anniversaries, so on and so forth.

This isn’t to say that life is depressing. I’m just saying that putting the time of it all in perspective is so disappointing because it takes forever to get back to this point and that is even if the Cowboys get back to this point next season.

We discussed everything that happened during Sunday night’s season-ending loss on our Dallas Cowboys Postgame Show on the Blogging The Boys podcast network. Subscribe to our network so you don’t miss any of our shows! Apple devices can subscribe here and Spotify users can subscribe here.

Opportunities for postseason success are precious and it is disappointing to see the Cowboys throw another one away. When will it change? Will it ever?

As the season ended in humiliating fashion it only felt right to go with a losers-only edition of winners and losers. Let’s begin. Sigh.

Loser: The Dallas Cowboys

Hindsight will tell us that we were duped by this team into believing that this season was different, but the thing is that this season really was different at different times.

Over the first half of the campaign the Cowboys won in ways that seemed impossible for teams of old. They exorcised multiple demons and looked to finally be turning a corner. Alas, who we have always known eventually found a way to show up.

Loser: Mike McCarthy

Mike McCarthy waited several years to get back to the playoffs to prove that he is a legitimate head coach in the NFL. He completely and totally collapsed in his opportunity to shine.

The Cowboys committed 14 penalties as a team. What’s more is that they tried to get cute at different times and it wound up backfiring on them. For instance, what on earth were they trying to do after they successfully converted the fake punt? Their own hubris led to a delay of game that costed them five yards that could have maybe made a difference down the road.

What’s more is that after the game several Cowboys players followed McCarthy’s lead and blamed officials. That is not a good culture to have. Not at all.

Loser: Dak Prescott

The franchise quarterback came up rather small in what was arguably the biggest moment of his career. It is incredibly disappointing.

To be clear Dak Prescott was phenomenal over the first half of the season but ever since he returned from the calf injury was seemingly a different person. The Cowboys won in spite of him at points for the first time in Prescott’s career and he didn’t know that he had to hand the ball back to the official at the end of Sunday’s game which could have maybe saved the team one play to try and win the game.

Simply put, Prescott has to be better. He wasn’t. And that is going to be something that we have to deal with for an entire offseason.

Loser: Jerry Jones

We talk about culture and what this team is all of the time. Many coaches, players, scouts, and other forms of football personnel have walked in to try and fix things but there has only ever been one common denominator.

Jerry Jones has built a team that operates differently. Consider that his refusal to even address the sun that shines through his stadium played a tiny role in a playoff game. That is insane when you really think about it.

Loser: Kellen Moore

How can any NFL team legitimately feel like he is ready to be a head coach? Kellen’s offense regressed over the second half of the season and did not live up to any sort of hype in any way.

Many are again upset about the final play of the game, but remember that the Cowboys offense did have the ball with a chance to take the lead on the possession before that. They turned the ball over on downs. They blew their legitimate shot.

Loser: Connor Williams

What is there to even say at this point? The penalties are what they are. The Cowboys knew that it was an issue, tried to resolve it, and had to go back to him.

That was arguably his worst game as a professional, though.

Loser: Discipline

How do you have 14 penalties? In a playoff game? At home!

At one point in this game the Cowboys had BACK TO BACK false starts! AT HOME! Right after halftime where they conceivably came up with a plan to try and execute!

This was a disastrous performance as far as team discipline was concerned.

Loser: Trevon Diggs

We have known all season long that Trevon Diggs is a bit hit or miss at times. Late in this game the Cowboys were fortunate that Jimmy Garoppolo missed Brandon Aiyuk because Trevon Diggs was BEAT in all sorts of ways by him.

Diggs had an incredible season for the Cowboys. But he was absent on Sunday.

Loser: Randy Gregory

On the subject of discipline, Randy Gregory did not have a lot of it. You simply cannot jump offsides and keep the other team’s drives alive. Randy did that against the 49ers.

Additionally we spent a lot of time this season praising the mighty pass rush of the Dallas Cowboys. Well as fate would have it they had a grand total of zero sacks in the biggest game of the year.

That isn’t good enough.

Loser: Dan Quinn

While on the whole Dan Quinn was great for the Cowboys this season the reality is that on Sunday he got out-coached by his former offensive coordinator in Kyle Shanahan.

All week long we knew that the 49ers were going to try and run the ball all over the place and that Deebo Samuel was going to be used in a number of different ways. San Francisco did exactly that and the Cowboys had no answer for it.

When you lose to the predictable thing it is a different kind of upsetting.