Distractions and a lack of paying attention to details wreck the Cowboys in Atlanta

The Dallas Cowboys are a mess in almost facet of football, and that includes on and off the field. Their 27-21 loss to the Atlanta Falcons demonstrated just how far this team has fallen, and no matter how they try, they can’t seem to get out of their own way. They lost the battle and likely the war, falling to 3-5 and four games behind the Washington Commanders in the NFC East. Adding injury to the insulting performance of Sunday is Dak Prescott suffering a hamstring injury that will keep him off the field for some time, as well as an apparent shoulder injury to CeeDee Lamb. Prescott was forced out of the game, giving way to Cooper Rush. Meanwhile, Lamb was obviously uncomfortable for most of the game’s closing stages, and his injury status is murky. The Cowboys are riddled with injuries, but that’s not the primary reason why this team looks almost unrecognizable.

This year’s version of the Cowboys differs from the group we’ve become accustomed to seeing. Sure, postseason success has eluded them for over a quarter century, but at the very least, under head coach Mike McCarthy, they have been a consistent team in the regular season. Yet, things are amiss. Discipline is the chief concern. Dallas struggles to do the most elementary football things well on a play-by-play basis. The reason for it has been discussed ad nauseam this season: distractions. Internally, the team is in shambles. From Jerry Jones losing his composure with local radio hosts and threatening their jobs, or their players being reprimanded for a lack of professionalism. On Saturday, the team announced that running back Ezekiel Elliott would not travel with the team to Atlanta and was made inactive for Sunday’s game due to disciplinary reasons. We later learned that it was because of a continual pattern of missing meetings and arriving late at the team facility. The Cowboys, inside their own walls, aren’t secure in addressing their problems.

Elliott’s issues festering as long as they did, where a pattern of such behavior had to become an internal distraction before the team stepped in to make him inactive, speaks of a cultural dysfunction devoid of regulation and proper self-governance. Elliott’s one example, but players have also cited other detractions such as stadium tours at the Star in Frisco, while players are going about their football business, yet interrupted by visitors to the facility.

Getting away from the home confines suits this team better, if only slightly. However, the diversions from a focused environment are spilling onto the field, causing the Cowboys to lose attention to details, costing them games. Here’s where the details undid the Cowboys’ game against the Atlanta Falcons. There are far too many to count, but we’ll focus on a few before stating what the team needs to do with the season at the brink of slipping away.

Zack Martin’s whiff on Kaden Elliss
The Cowboys are searching for anything to grasp onto offensively. They moved the ball easily on their opening drive and ran an up-tempo attack. Dak Prescott was perfect on all his throws and navigated the pocket despite occasional leaks in protection. Rico Dowdle, who was the feature back after Elliott was ruled inactive, looked good in his role. Mike McCarthy called a screen to Dowdle on 2nd-and-8 from the Falcons’ 19-yard line, and it was well-designed. The blocks appeared to be set up, and Atlanta was out of position except for linebacker Kaden Elliss. Elliss was one-on-one with future Hall of Fame guard Zack Martin. That should’ve been signed and delivered. At best, it is a pancake for Martin, and at worst, a block that sets Dowdle free for a score. Instead, Elliss slips the block and tackles Dowdle for a four-yard loss. Two plays later, Dallas settles for a field goal from Brandon Aubrey.

Cowboys not blocking Grady Jarrett on 3rd-and-short
Depending on who you ask, Tyler Smith or Tyler Guyton are responsible for a negative sequence that flipped the game even further for the Cowboys. The Cowboys were trailing 7-3 and could feel relatively good about where they were until that point in the game. As stated, they did leave points on the board during their opening drive but showed something of a spryness to the way they were carrying themselves, and you could see the glimmers of confidence. They were flying around on defense, especially DeMarvion Overshown, and although their first drive stalled, they played with more rhythm offensively to open the game than we’ve seen in almost a month. Therefore, it was painful to watch the left side of the Cowboys’ offensive line miss a basic blocking assignment.

It was 3rd and 1 at the Atlanta 44-yard line. If Dallas blocks Grady Jarrett, their drive continues on an easy third-down conversion. Unfortunately, Jarrett slipped past both Guyton and Smith for the stop on third down and Dallas had to go for it on fourth down. McCarthy, likely outsmarting himself or lacking belief in his interior offensive line, calls for a jet sweep to CeeDee Lamb, who is tackled for a loss, and the Cowboys turn the ball over on downs. The lack of execution from Guyton and Smith set the offense up to fail on fourth down, setting up the next fundamental flaw from Sunday.

Diggs not wrapping up Kyle Pitts to force Atlanta into a punt
Plenty of respect should go to Trevon Diggs for playing. He hadn’t practiced all week, and we discovered following last week’s game against the San Francisco 49ers that Diggs suffered a tear in his calf. Early in the contest, Diggs looked reasonably mobile. Still, Atlanta made it a point to challenge Diggs in coverage, but his tackling hurt the Cowboys. The Cowboys were down 7-3 and were gifted a 3rd-and-14 on defense after a flag was thrown on Falcons’ offensive tackle Jake Matthews for holding. Dallas managed to get Kirk Cousins to check it down short to Kyle Pitts, and all Diggs has to do is wrap up and not let Pitts get additional yards. Instead of making the fundamentally sound tackle, Diggs throws his shoulder into Pitts, who shrugs off the glancing contact to give Cousins a fourth and short. Then this happened:

Even in that sequence, you can see the indecision of who is responsible for which receiver. The Falcons were obviously isolating Diggs, and Cousins saw it, giving the check to his wide receiver. Diggs got lost in the bunch of receivers before being woefully behind the play as Darnell Mooney cruised in for the score. Diggs’ absence of basic football principles opens the door for the worst possible outcome, and he’s the one who’s caught out of position on the scoring play right after.

Bonus blunders
As the game got progressively worse, more incidents of mental mistakes cropped up. On one play, a throw by Cousins to Bijan Robinson was ruled to be a backward pass that Robinson mishandled. If the defense was determined to play through the whistle, they could have snatched the ball from Robinson to set themselves up for a short drive on the Atlanta side of the field, but the defense didn’t have any urgency.

Also, the Cowboys foolishly burned two of their timeouts in the first half, one that was called before Diggs allowed a touchdown to Mooney. Managing their timeouts better could have gotten Brandon Aubrey a shot at a field goal on their last possession going into the half.

Penalties. The Cowboys committed nine penalties against Atlanta, many pre-snap penalties. To open the second half, Terence Steele committed a false start on the team’s first play of the drive. Dallas also had a brutal penalty for 12 men in the huddle on 4th-and-inches and proceeded to punt the ball back to Atlanta after being backed up five yards on the penalty. Rookie left tackle Tyler Guyton had multiple penalties of several different types.

The little miscues eventually snowball into an avalanche of errors and bury the Cowboys under their lack of focus and attention to detail. Much of it is correctable, but they have dug a deep hole for themselves in the division they cannot escape from. The injuries have taken their toll, and the Cowboys are forced to play intellectually sound football to give themselves a chance since they are so short-handed. As we’ve seen, the team isn’t doing that. Plus, when you factor coaching into the equation and a general manager who would rather sell you an ocean-view property in downtown Dallas than field a competitive roster in earnest, there’s no salvaging this team in 2024.

Now what?
Lastly, what should they do? Assuming Prescott is out for a while and goes on injured reserve, the team needs to send a series of messages, if not just one, if the team responds to the first: Cut Ezekiel Elliott. Countless metrics and statistics have shown that he is a bottom-tier runner in the NFL. His lack of explosiveness and elusiveness capsizes the offense that has to fight desperately for ever blade of synthetic grass from down to down to stay ahead of the sticks. He has the lowest success rate of his career as a runner and offers nothing as a receiver. Off the field, he hasn’t been able to be relied upon to report to work on time and not miss meetings, which has been revealed this week. Elliott’s presence is a beacon of misplaced fellowship between him and the front office that offers a negative outcome in the locker room and on the field. By severing ties with Elliott, hopefully, for good, it informs the team that there are no more favorites and everyone is on notice for the remainder of the year.

If the team fails to respond to Elliott’s dismissal, fire Mike McCarthy. 36 wins over the last three years is fine, but the standard in Dallas has always been more than NFC East banners. On several occasions, his team has been ill-prepared for postseason games where the team is lethargic at home during playoff games, especially last season against an upstart Green Bay Packers team. His team is flat, and they’re making several mistakes that he and his coaches are failing to correct.

At this stage, he’s in the final year of his contract and hasn’t shown anything worthy of giving him a new deal. Cut ties with the head coach and begin remaking the personnel and coaching staff from the ground up. Taking it a step further, if you fire McCarthy and the team is mathematically out of contention, sit Prescott for the year and play Trey Lance. Dallas invested a fourth-round pick to trade for him, and the only way they can get some return on the investment now is to hope for a compensatory pick once he likely leaves for free agency.

Yet, it is questionable that Jones is willing to indicate to the fanbase that his failures as a general manager and the team’s distractions have doomed them before Thanksgiving, which Jones loves to use as a marketing tool. Buckle up, Cowboys fans; the ride is about to get rocky.