Cowboys vs. Lions stock report: Dak Prescott, Mike McCarthy, Jerry Jones all down
We have said things like this before. My goal is not to be a prisoner of the moment. But for the life of me, it is hard to recall a time where being a Dallas Cowboys fan felt like this (gestures wildly at everything).
The situation has reached critical mass, DEFCON 1, whatever you want to call it. Sirens are going off and we are so numb to it that we may as well be hitting the snooze button on our alarms.
Sunday’s beatdown at the hands of the Detroit Lions was literally the worst loss that the Cowboys have experienced both at AT&T Stadium and in the Jerry Jones ownership era. It was so bad and humiliating that the official X/Twitter account for the building blurred the score out when sharing the attendance figure for the game. To make matters worse, it was revealed on Monday morning that this is the second game/beatdown in a row where they have done that.
Here is our stock report. It is shorter than usual because we have focused on the primary culprits of blame and we are going in descending order of most blame to least (to be clear the least amount is still a lot).
Let’s go, or whatever.
Stock Down: Jerry Jones
There is nothing to say here that we have not all shared before. But it obviously starts with the owner, president, general manager – add whatever other title that you want.
If you agree with the intro that this is the most down bad (for lack of a more proper term) that we have been as Cowboys fans in some time, Jerry Jones is the person with the most fingerprints across the product.
I mean… should we be surprised that the team that built a stadium with a blatant design flaw, the team that wouldn’t let Overshown wear #0 cause it’s Rowdy’s number, the team that brought Zeke back as RB1, the team that traded a 4th round pick for a 3rd string QB they don’t use,… pic.twitter.com/KUR63rbLkD
— Ben Rogers (@BenRogers) October 14, 2024
The sun was an issue once again on Sunday afternoon as Ben Rogers (and many others noted). To be clear this is a very stupid and silly thing to complain about. But it persists as an impediment to the home team having success and is, as has been documented many times, an avoidable problem. Yet here we are.
On Sunday night we got word from Jones that Mike McCarthy will not be fired anytime soon. This is a talking point in Week 6! McCarthy is certainly at fault in many ways, more on him in a bit, but that these questions are circling now is directly the result of the design that Jerry had for this operation. By not firing or extending McCarthy in the offseason he set up a situation born and bred for toxicity. Those were tough options, but as the person in charge he had to be the one to figure out a way to navigate through it.
He didn’t. He stirred the pot. Dragged out contracts. Gaslit the fans. And now we all have to sit, watch and try to tolerate this mess on a weekly basis.
So many people are wondering how we got here when Jerry dragged us.
Stock Down: Dak Prescott
There are a lot of issues going on at the moment, but as QB1 you have to find a way. This type of logic and expectation may be unfair and ridiculous, but that is what comes with the territory.
Dak did the Cowboys no favors last week in Pittsburgh but capitalized on a final opportunity to win the game. That was objectively a nice turnaround.
Sunday offered only bad. We can note certain issues that he is dealing with and recognize them as real (the lack of playmakers, etc), but Prescott has to play better as well. His two interceptions were both horrible throws where he was pressing, something that has been common in the home blowouts this year.
Following the loss to the Baltimore Ravens, Prescott challenged fans to “jump off” if they were seriously doubting the team. Recall that he also noted during training camp that fans needed to get over the playoff loss and that they as players likely took it harder because they play for the team.
I’m a Dak fan and have defended him a lot, but those things and moments all sound great in the first act of the movie before the team in question goes in a miracle run. Without that finishing element it all just sounds empty and hollow and frustrating.
Stock Down: Mike McCarthy
Like with his quarterback, Mike McCarthy has also been asked to swim upstream or else. He is in a tough spot. But he is not helping himself.
This is a team that seemed to check out and did so in the most disorganized way possible. McCarthy is failing as both a head coach and a play-caller at the moment. It is difficult to find something that he is doing well.
Beyond the fact that McCarthy’s team hasn’t really showed up for the season, he seems to not have as well. Consider that he kicked a field goal while down 34-6 at one point. Seriously. This happened! People will say that it was 4th and 12… but the score was 34-6!
What’s more is even if you somehow want to believe that order can be restored here, the Cowboys were clearly losing this game very early on (relatively speaking). Practically speaking you could have just accepted that, acknowledged that you are 3-3 and lived to fight another day.
McCarthy chose not to do this. He insisted on playing for pride (lol) or whatever you want to call it and kept starters in as the humiliation continued on. In the third quarter things got tense when it looked like Dak may have hurt his hand while hitting it on a helmet. Like with choosing to continually take the ball when winning the opening coin toss, it all smells of extreme desperation.
Stock Down: Zack Martin
Zack Martin is here because his Hall of Fame resumé demands that we expect greatness form him play in and play out. That being said, Sunday may have been one of the worst games of his career.
It is certainly fair to say that Martin is closer to the end of playing for the Cowboys than the beginning, and so it is foolish to expect him to look like his 2016 self, but my goodness this was not the player we have come to know for over a decade.
Stock Down: Trevon Diggs
Micah Parsons is out for the moment. You can add DeMarcus Lawrence, DaRon Bland, Caelen Carson, Sam Williams… you get the picture here. The Cowboys are missing defensive playmakers.
Trevon Diggs is healthy and playing, though. In spite of this, Detroit Lions wide receiver Jameson Williams had quite the day against him on Sunday. We can expect Diggs to offer the same level of “find a way” from Prescott in a similar sense yet saw absolutely nothing in that regard on Sunday. It is disheartening.
Stock Down: Terence Steele
He is the weakest point on the offensive line at the moment despite being the second-most tenured. That simply cannot be the case.
We have been having this conversation all season now. There are areas of the roster that are bad because the team ignored them over the offseason and that is unfortunate, but this is not one of those cases. Steele has been dropping off a bit for a while now, but this is a new level.
Stock Down: Mike Zimmer
I was never of the mindset that bringing Mike Zimmer out of pseudo retirement was going to magically fix everything. Additionally, it is important to remember that the only other names who the Cowboys were seriously tied to in their defensive coordinator search after Dan Quinn left were Ron Rivera and Rex Ryan. Seriously. It was those two and Zimmer. That was the list!
And so you mean to tell me that Zimmer is commanding one of the worst defenses ever right now? It’s shocking the defense is this bad because nothing this bad is ever predictable, but it is predictable that the fountain of youth was not found just because the front office wanted it to be.
It is one thing to be bad, but it is another to to be getting completely overwhelmed. We have talked so much about motion and its usage across the NFL and how other teams are capable of surviving it at the very least, yet the Dallas Cowboys get completely fried by it. How? How still?