Cowboys fail Week 5 test in San Francisco

Well, Cowboys Fan, how are you feeling this morning after the 42-10 beatdown you just watched?

Mad? Angry? A word we really can’t use because kids might be reading this?

How about fed up? Are we fed up with a franchise that finally shows signs of “getting it” only to fold in the big games?

How many more of these games are we going to have to endure?

Better yet, how much longer will these performances be tolerated before serious changes are made?

On Sunday night in San Francisco the Cowboys once again failed to show up on both sides of the ball.

The offense spent twice as much time sitting on their backsides on the bench than they did standing on the field.

They needed to run the ball and avoid turnovers. They did neither.

The defense kept negating third down stops with stupid penalties.

They generated no pressure on Brock Purdy. They couldn’t stop the run.

They needed to contain George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey. They did neither.

In short, the Dallas Cowboys arrived in San Francisco completely unprepared to play professional football.

The Good News

Dallas is still in second place in the NFC East at 3-2 and two games behind the Eagles. They still have two games against the Eagles ahead.

And Philadelphia has a brutal stretch coming up in their schedule ahead.

The Cowboys can still win the NFC East. They could possibly even host a divisional round game without playing in the wild card round.

The Bad News

They won’t make the playoffs if they keep playing the way they have against the Cardinals and the 49ers.

Every person associated with the organization owns what happened on Sunday night. From owner Jerry Jones on down.

The actual bad news? I have no clue how they fix this.

The scary news? I’m wondering if anyone at The Star does either.

By The Numbers

Including playoff games, it was the third-straight loss to the 49ers. The Cowboys had won the last three regular-season games against the 49ers.

San Francisco improves to 20-19-1 all-time against Dallas, 16-14-1 in regular season games.

The 49ers are now 11-10 against Dallas at home.

Is This The National Rugby League?

It is far past time for the “tush push” to go. Not in the off-season. Now.

As in the NFL needs to instruct its officials to start throwing a flag for illegal formation as soon as the ball is snapped.

That is a rugby play. It is not a professional football play.

And the real issue is that someone is going to get seriously hurt one of these times.

For a league so “concerned about player safety” allowing this play to continue seems to put the lie to those concerns.

Miami, What Is You Doin?

Third down with 45 seconds to play. The opponent is out of timeouts.

So, snap the ball, take a knee, and let the clock run down to about :04 seconds.

Then you either punt or run one last play with the quarterback backing up to eat up the clock before falling to the ground.

For those of us who watched the Miracle at the Meadowlands live in 1978, that’s the only option. Apparently this play was unknown to the Miami Hurricanes coaching staff.

In a clear take a knee and run out the clock situation, the Hurricanes instead ran a regular play. It ended in a fumble.

Georgia Tech then promptly won the game on a last second bomb.

Miami’s quarterback was seen sitting on the bench asking himself “What are we doing?” He had another word in there, but remember the children.

Son, that’s what we were all asking on Saturday night after watching the end of that game.