Brett's Cowboys Corner

Three years. That’s how long you have had to prepare your team to beat the 49ers. They have sent you home in the playoffs twice, plus two regular season losses.

At some point since 2022 you would like to imagine the Cowboys have figured out an answer.

At no point have the 49ers come out and do anything differently than they did in the 2022 Wild Card. So what gives? Why haven’t you learned?

George Kittle has continued to dominate you in all of these series, and at some point the team had to watch the tape of last years game. But the same old story just keeps playing.

The plan against Kittle was to put Donovan Wilson, who doesn’t excel in coverage, he is more of a run support player. Let’s see how that plays out.

Mike Zimmer’s plan of attack was to create a lot of pressure against Purdy, which can be good idea except it leaves your coverage in single man to man and your defensive backs are not playing tight coverage. They failed all night to keep a close window with the receivers and allowed crossing routes to be easy targets. The Cowboys roughed up some of those throws with pressure, but there were a few that a bad ball from Purdy bailed them out.

Going into this game, Brock Purdy and Dak Prescott led the NFL in tight window % throws. Both 20%+ meaning they are having to throw perfect balls since their receivers are getting a lot of separation. Purdy only had to throw into a tight window 3.8% of the time vs Dallas.

But the defense kept it close nonetheless, Dallas led into halftime 10-6, but the wheels fell off the bus. Pretty consistently Dallas comes out to start the 2nd half not ready to play football. 49ers lead a scoring drive and begin to make this feel like a blowout.

The strange part about playing the 49ers, they let you stay in the game but at the same time it doesn’t feel that way. In 2022, the 49ers led 23-10 and gave up a touchdown, punted and gave Dallas a chance to win the game with 30 seconds. Of course Dallas would drive downfield and Dak would run down the field and slide in bounds, not leaving himself time to spike it.

In 2023, the 49ers take a 19-12 lead with 3 minutes left and gave Dallas two chances to tie the game, but with some poor execution they punted and well the last act of desperation featured Zeke at center.

So here we are in 2024, the defense makes a great stop, with a DeMarvion Overshown sack, the Cowboys have the ball with 3 minutes left again, trailing 6 points. A drive to win the game…what happens next?

Dak throws it over the middle, where the ball would have to go through two 49er defenders before getting to Lamb. This wasn’t the read, it was tunnel vision. This has been a problem with Prescott’s game this year. Why are you locked onto Lamb? Well the previous TD drive, 3 big passes to Lamb and capped it off with a wide open touchdown. He wanted that momentum to continue.

The Cowboys went on to throw three more bad passes and that ends their game.

With two weeks to prepare a much needed fresh scheme, the Cowboys did not deliver. There are no complex routes or even simple route combos. Everything is forced and single read.

A part of that problem is the offensive line. They give up pressures so quickly and breakdown, Dak has to get the ball out quickly and but sometimes forces bad deep balls. Like on his interception into double coverage to Turpin.

There was no deep route to try and draw the safety away from the play, allowing Turpin to be doubled and an easy interception.

There have been teams to succeed with bad offensive lines, but they have to create route combinations that allow quick separation. But that hasn’t happened in McCarthy’s offense.

Overall the offense has not looked any better, bringing in Dalvin Cook to play didn’t bring much of an impact. Primarily because he wasn’t on the field hardly. This isn’t a high powered offense and I’m not sure if they can keep up with Atlanta next week.