Cowboys Coach Mike McCarthy Should Be Ripped for ‘Horrendous’ Dak Prescott Decision

If the Cowboys keep arriving at this same brain-dead decision, they will keep being wrong.

FRISCO - With a day to reflect on it, the Dallas Cowboys still believe they gained something by dangling Dak Prescott out in front of the Denver Broncos in the final meaningless minutes of Sunday’s blowout loss.

But coach Mike McCarthy and coordinator Kellen Moore and Prescott himself can have all the time they want to reflect. 

If they keep arriving at the same brain-dead decision, they will keep being wrong. 

“We needed to get some energy, some momentum,'' said Prescott, trying to explain the odd decision. "We needed to show our fight, our resiliency, something that’s won us a lot of games. When you’re getting beat like that, you’ve got to show your character.''

This is "manly'' stuff, and as this is also "football,'' I get it.

Energy. Momentum. Fight. Resiliency. Character.

Baloney.

Scoring two meaningless touchdowns in the final minutes "showed'' nothing, and the risk/reward - not even counting the fact that Prescott is coming off a calf injury bad enough that he sat out last week's win at Minnesota - is outrageously imbalanced.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. ... and I'm not counting myself among the knee-jerkers and shock-jockers.

In this instance, former NFL coach Rex Ryan shouldn't be counted in that group, either.

During Monday’s installment of ESPN’s “Get Up,” Ryan ripped McCarthy over his "horrendous'' decision.

“To me, this is a disaster,'' Ryan said, addressing McCarthy directly. "Had Dak Prescott got hurt, guess what my friend? You would have been fired.”

I would argue that had Dak been lost to serious injury, as he was in 2020, McCarthy would not have been fired on the spot - but that he would've been fired after this season. ... because another Dak injury would've led directly to another 2020-like collapse.

And what was accomplished again? McCarthy tried to explain that the team needed work on its two-minute offense, which makes no sense, at it would mean that Dallas purposely got Dak to work in combo with the team's No. 6 receiver, Malik Turner, who scored two late TDs.

But if the first-team offense needed "two-minute drill work,'' why did Amari Cooper and Ezekiel Elliott sit out the final few minutes? Don't they need to work with Dak on "timing,'' too?

Obviously, they were tugged to the bench as they were dealing with nagging injuries ... and the rest superseded the risk.

But rest didn't supersede risk with the $40 million QB?

Prescott, said it “never crossed my mind” to exit the game early.

“I mean, there was game left out there to be played,” Prescott said. “It never crossed my mind that I was coming out of the game. I think if somebody would have tried to make that decision, I would have told them I wasn’t.”

Energy. Momentum. Fight. Resiliency. Character.

Foolishness.

It is Prescott's job to play - but not to unilaterally make decisions beyond that. It is McCarthy job (among many other things, most of which over the course of 6-2 he's done very well) to tell people like Prescott when not to play, and to veto, when necessary, a player's natural urge to "fight.'' ... to be needlessly "brave.''

"Discretion is the better part of valor,'' the old saying goes. And for youngish athletes who, unlike Mike McCarthy, who have never heard the phrase, it translates to something like this:

"We're behind 30-0 with six minutes left. Dak, sit down. Cooper Rush, go in.''

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