Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images The latest Dallas Cowboys news is here. Cowboys WR CeeDee Lamb has candid reaction to Dak Prescott’s couple of interceptions vs 49ers – Mauricio Rodriguez, A to Z Sports It was after the bye week last year when the Prescott to Lamb connection really heated up, but this time it was desperate fourth quarter touchdowns in another loss. “We’re about to get this thing rolling, for sure,” Lamb told reporters postgame. “We gotta maintain the momentum, we can’t really go out too up and down.” The Cowboys offense has gone through growing pains, as the team still lacks a solid run game and the pass protection up front is a huge concern. Additionally, Dak Prescott is not playing top-tier football. Sunday’s two-interception performance, he raised his season total to eight. He had nine in all of the 2023 season. Lamb was asked about the quarterback’s turnovers, providing a candid response in which he admitted some of it is on Dak while some of it is on the receivers for not being physical. “It’s some things that we can’t control, some things that we can,” Lamb said. “As for him, I know he can do better and have a better read. And for us, we can have better routes, fight at the top of the routes. There are plenty of ways you can avoid an interception, you know what I’m saying? And on both parties. I know he can vouch for that, but as for us, I can only speak for us, and we have to be more physical at the top of the route.” Lamb’s reaction goes hand in hand with Troy Aikman’s recent criticisms of the offense, when he stated the Cowboys receivers had to be more physical with their route running. Cowboys’ Prescott takes blame for interceptions in loss: ‘I’ve got to clean that up’ – Todd Brock, The Cowboys Wire Dak Prescott has thrown two interceptions in three straight games. Prescott was quick to take personal responsibility for the miscues. “I don’t have to be perfect,” he said in his postgame press conference, “but I damn sure can’t be having the turnovers.” Winning the turnover battle was a “huge, blinking light” for head coach Mike McCarthy during the team’s bye week; Dallas came into Sunday night’s contest with a minus-six differential in the category. After Prescott’s two giveaways in Santa Clara, the Cowboys are minus-eight; only the Raiders and Titans (three combined wins this season) are worse. Good teams simply aren’t bad in that stat. “[We] put ourselves behind in the turnover battle, and that’s on me,” Prescott said. “Can’t have that if we plan to win games, and I’ve got to clean that up, period.” Don’t be fooled by Cowboys hollow comeback attempt against the 49ers – Jess Haynie, Blogging The Boys The Cowboys late comeback attempt had a similar feel to the Ravens game, masking how much better their opponent really was for much of the game. Nobody, including the 49ers, saw that fourth-quarter comeback coming. And that’s really why it happened; San Francisco was already in prevent mode and clearly stopped taking the Cowboys seriously. The proven All-Pro connection between QB Dak Prescott and WR CeeDee Lamb took advantage of the complacency, and suddenly the 49ers looked like Apollo Creed in the first round of his first fight with Rocky. But don’t be fooled by what Dallas nearly accomplished, because most opponents aren’t going to make that same mistake. Beating up the Cowboys is old hat for the 49ers and they have every reason to not respect us. It only took them one quarter of competent football to turn the game into another laugher. When they got up 27-10, they just got sleepy and bored. The issues that have plagued the Cowboys all season were still there on the final drive. Mike McCarthy’s unimaginative offensive scheme left bad options for Prescott, who threw four straight incompletions to kill the comeback. While he did throw a dime to KaVontae Turpin on one attempt, putting the game on Turpin’s suspect hands was hardly the optimal design. This game was much more about the hole that Dallas found themselves in than nearly climbing out of it. How sad is it that Ezekiel Elliott averaging 3.4 yards per carry felt like progress? Watching rookie RB Isaac Guerendo rip off 85 yards after Jordan Mason’s injury rubbed salt in the wound; another guy the Cowboys missed out on in the 2024 Draft. And even as the passing game found some redemption near the end, Prescott’s crushing interceptions when the 49ers were still playing defense were more damning. Worst of all, this wasn’t even your typical NFC-leading San Francisco team. They’re only 4-4 now after beating Dallas, battling their own issues and injuries. Mike McCarthy names Cowboys’ biggest issue after another loss to 49ers – Patrik Walker, DallasCowboys.com The Cowboys are still searching for answers as the third place team in the NFC East after Sunday. “The third quarter was definitely a factor in the outcome — the three three-and-outs by our offense and the one giveaway,” said head coach Mike McCarthy. “You have ebbs and flows of the game and we definitely stayed in that valley way too long. It felt solid at halftime … we didn’t give our defense any relief [in the third quarter].” Despite the list of self-inflicted wounds in all three phases of the game, with even the usually stout special teams unit and Brandon Aubrey joining in on those, Prescott and the Cowboys had a chance to try and march down the field for a potential go-ahead touchdown after igniting with CeeDee Lamb in the final session but, unlike the outing against the Pittsburgh Steelers, there would be no fairy tale ending in California. A couple more self-inflicted wounds later and the loss was effectively secured. “We did an excellent job of fighting back in the fourth quarter and needed to make one or two more plays,

Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports The Cowboys announced that pass rusher Sam Williams is suspended for 3 games dating back to before the 49ers game. Not even 24 hours removed from their latest loss, the Dallas Cowboys announced some more challenging news for their roster. It was revealed on Monday afternoon that defensive end Sam Williams is suspended for three games dating back to before the San Francisco 49ers game. Apparently the issue is related to before the start of last (as in 2023) season. Tied back to episode before start of last season. https://t.co/MoHLlsmCzP — David Moore (@DavidMooreDMN) October 28, 2024 You will recall that Williams was arrested in August of 2023 on substance, weapons charges. It appears this is all connected to the suspension and the violation of the Personal Conduct Policy for the NFL. Williams tore his ACL at the beginning of training camp this season and is therefore unavailable to the Cowboys to actually play, but is serving out his suspension nonetheless. As the three-game suspension dates back to before the 49ers game he must “miss” the contests against the Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles before being eligible for reinstatement.

Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images A day of reflection makes the Cowboys loss to San Francisco feel all the more frustrating and empty. The Dallas Cowboys are disappointing these days. As far as football operations and goals are concerned, they are a bad team and are boring on top of it all which only makes matters worse. Much of this all was predictable over the course of the offseason that they chose to do nothing during, and the constant pot-stirring and gaslighting from the front office only served to upset people in the process. On Sunday night the Cowboys lost to a bitter rival in the San Francisco 49ers. It was the fourth loss in a row for Dallas that came at the hands of San Francisco specifically, two of which were infamously in the playoffs over the last handful of years. This was admittedly not the stout version of the 49ers that dismantled the Cowboys in the past, but even still they had relatively no issue rising to the occasion and proving to be the better team in every single way. Expectations have fallen dramatically for the Cowboys around the proverbial water cooler so that they had a halftime lead (10-6, very strong) was enough positive shock for the night before everything unraveled. We have all experienced tough times for the Cowboys before, but this specific level of chaos is not often reached. Here are our thoughts about what we just saw after a night’s worth of rest, although that didn’t do much to change anything. The losses always sting, but the passion involved feels so far away right now It has been said a lot that the playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers broke Dallas Cowboys fans. These days it is hard to counter that. Sunday’s loss was once again to a conference rival, and one that has owned the Cowboys for some time now. In the past when the Cowboys faced circumstances like that it seems like, we have embraced the challenge of the against-all-odds nature of it all. We relished in the opportunity to prove everybody wrong. That passion, if you want to call it that, appears to be absent from even the Cowboys themselves right now. When they led San Francisco it was kind of fun but our worst fears were held near the front of our minds, not even at the back. As the 49ers poured it on it all felt cut and dry, like we were watching it from some sort of detached space. Maybe you really did buy all the way in to the pseudo comeback, but it felt so impossible which was evidenced in the team’s win probability. According to NFL Pro it never got higher on the Dallas side than 5% throughout all of the fourth quarter. The passion is absent right now. And that really stinks. There is a lot of how we got here, but Dak Prescott has to be better It would be difficult to count the number of words I have offered in Dak Prescott’s defense – that he is a quarterback of the franchise caliber which means he is worth paying the going rate. Of course the Cowboys should never have drawn contractual discussions out as long as they possibly could so that the price would be as high as it became. They should have swallowed their pride and get it done the moment that they could in the name of getting the best possible price. But whatever the number is, the reality is that Prescott is paid the market rate among franchise quarterbacks, it just so happens that his number is the highest at the moment. He doesn’t have a proper surrounding cast at the moment, but all of that aside, he has been quite awful in his own performance. Whether the Cowboys are paying him or not, and they clearly are, Prescott plays the quarterback position where the glory and blame are both different. He is a big reason why the team is in the funk that they are and acting carelessly with the football is one of the primary reasons. Prescott has had a few interesting moments in terms of public discussion since training camp. While in Oxnard he noted that fans needed to let go of the failures of last year and said that it probably hurt the team more than it did anyone else. Following the loss to the Baltimore Ravens he challenged people to “jump off” (as in to stop supporting) the team if they wanted to at that moment in time. Consider that since then they are a .500 team with the two wins coming against two poor teams and the two losses coming in rather embarrassing fashion. Maybe the toll of being a Cowboys quarterback is, in fact, taking a toll. Whatever the case, this season has hardly been Dak Prescott’s finest one with a star on his helmet. This is not helping that the cast around him is bad, or that the contractual situation with him reached the point that it did, and it is all existing in one horrible universe that we are trapped in. Dallas Cowboys football hasn’t felt this Not Fun in a very long time This is a serious question: When was the last time you had fun rooting for the Dallas Cowboys? Maybe you say the season opener against the Cleveland Browns, but personally that day was pretty chaotic with the aforementioned Prescott contract happening just hours before kickoff. If I had to truly answer when the last time was that I had fun I think that I would say the penultimate game of the regular season for Dallas in 2023, the last time we saw them win in their home building. That was the night that the Cowboys beat the Detroit Lions in controversial fashion, CeeDee Lamb set the individual team receiving records, and Jimmy Johnson finally went into the Ring of Honor. It felt like all proverbial stars

Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images Who wins tonight… New York or Pittsburgh? The New York Giants play the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football. FanDuel has the Steelers as 5.5-point favorites over the Giants. Final score prediction: Steelers 24 – Giants 13. Check out FanDuel for all of your NFL betting needs. This is an open thread for game chat.

Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images Did you at all get excited about the potential comeback on Sunday night? The Dallas Cowboys weren’t expected to win in Sunday night’s showdown with the San Francisco 49ers. Few were surprised when they found themselves down 27-10 by the end of the third quarter. While Dallas nearly pulled off a comeback in the fourth, the rest of the game is far more indicative of where this team is and what lies ahead for a struggling, ill-equipped team. The night’s biggest surprise was that the Cowboys took a 10-6 lead into halftime. The Niners had shot themselves in the foot more than once in the first half, thanks largely to some drive-killing drops by Deebo Samuel. It wasn’t that Dallas’ defense had made some bold statement; just San Francisco struggling with execution and still trying to find consistency without RB Christian McCaffrey or WR Brandon Aiyuk in the lineup. The rhythm returned in a 21-0 run that seemed to put the game away. That felt like the 49ers-Cowboys matchups of recent years, with their offense exerting its will and Dallas having no cohesion when they got the ball. Beyond just this matchup, it felt like how the Cowboys have been manhandled in their other losses to the Lions, Ravens, and Saints, plus the 2023 playoff elimination by the Packers. Nobody, including the 49ers, saw that fourth-quarter comeback coming. And that’s really why it happened; San Francisco was already in prevent mode and clearly stopped taking the Cowboys seriously. The proven All-Pro connection between QB Dak Prescott and WR CeeDee Lamb took advantage of the complacency, and suddenly the 49ers looked like Apollo Creed in the first round of his first fight with Rocky. But don’t be fooled by what Dallas nearly accomplished, because most opponents aren’t going to make that same mistake. Beating up the Cowboys is old hat for the 49ers and they have every reason to not respect us. It only took them one quarter of competent football to turn the game into another laugher. When they got up 27-10, they just got sleepy and bored. The issues that have plagued the Cowboys all season were still there on the final drive. Mike McCarthy’s unimaginative offensive scheme left bad options for Prescott, who threw four straight incompletions to kill the comeback. While he did throw a dime to KaVontae Turpin on one attempt, putting the game on Turpin’s suspect hands was hardly the optimal design. This game was much more about the hole that Dallas found themselves in than nearly climbing out of it. How sad is it that Ezekiel Elliott averaging 3.4 yards per carry felt like progress? Watching rookie RB Isaac Guerendo rip off 85 yards after Jordan Mason’s injury rubbed salt in the wound; another guy the Cowboys missed out on in the 2024 Draft. And even as the passing game found some redemption near the end, Prescott’s crushing interceptions when the 49ers were still playing defense were more damning. Worst of all, this wasn’t even your typical NFC-leading San Francisco team. They’re only 4-4 now after beating Dallas, battling their own issues and injuries. What’s really scary is that the next four games against the Falcons, Eagles, Texans, and Commanders all feel like losses; arguably all better teams right now than the Niners. None of them, especially the NFC East rivals, are going to sleep on the Cowboys. What’s becoming clear is that it doesn’t matter how motivated or prepared this Dallas team is, they just don’t have the pieces this year. Their right tackle is sabotaging the offense and injuries have neutered the defense. Things could get better on that side of the ball once Micah Parsons and DaRon Bland return, but they won’t offer much help to their chronic weakness against the run. The biggest missing piece of all is at head coach. McCarthy is clearly no longer in touch with the modern game or how best to play to the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of his offense. Too much focus is placed on Dak Prescott’s leadership because his head coach is a feckless void of it. When his boss called out the offensive scheme and play-calling last week, McCarthy’s response was as flat as his performance. “I don’t think we have bad concepts and bad plays. But I’ll go back and check.” Nothing about this season says there are good concepts or plays. Yes, players have to execute and that’s been a problem at times. But predictable routes, lack of creativity, and poor run-versus-pass choices go back to design and play-calling. You can see the life draining from this team with every stalled drive and the blank look on the face of the head coach only more uninspiring. To be fair, Jerry Jones should keep his mouth shut about how anyone’s doing at their job. The front office set up this mess with their own negligence during the offseason. Making McCarthy the scapegoat is just a step above berating media members who ask tough questions. If they willfully mortgaged 2024 to set the team up for the future, then just own it. Go into tank mode, trade away who you can for picks, and stop pretending that this team should be something that you never really intended for this season. The 49ers only showed up for one quarter in the last game and it was enough to put Dallas away. Better competition and bigger embarrassments are just around the corner. The Dallas Cowboys are currently broken, lacking the resources and repair team to do anything about it until the offseason. Until then, unless Jones surprises us by firing McCarthy, there’s not much more to do than ride this out and hope young players like Tyler Guyton, Cooper Beebe, DeMarvion Overshown, and others get valuable reps to build on. If 2024 is a lost cause, now’s the time to mine whatever you can to make future seasons more competitive.

Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images The Dallas Cowboys came up just short in a battle of attrition at the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday night. In a game all about adjustments, toughness, physicality, and both teams finding a way without many of their star players, the final score tells the familiar story of the 49ers doing this at a much higher level than the Cowboys. This was a meeting of rivals that represented the NFC as the #1 and #2 seeds a year ago, with both having a lot of work to do to find anything close to that form, but desperate for a fourth win to hopefully get things going. For the first time in three meetings against the 49ers, the Cowboys had the lead at halftime, but still managed to trail by 17 going into the fourth quarter. Kyle Shanahan’s team came out of the locker room inspired to take control of this game at home and save their season, sticking to what they do best and rattling off 17 straight points to put the Cowboys in a familiar trailing position. Unfortunately, the Cowboys could not match this desperation, and although their familiarity with being forced into being a one-dimensional drop back team led to two CeeDee Lamb touchdowns in the fourth quarter, the 49ers held on to win their fourth straight against the Cowboys, fourth game of this season, and hand Mike McCarthy’s team their fourth loss of 2024. If the Cowboys’ 47-9 loss two weeks ago at home to the Lions was about being shown how far off the pace they are in being a playoff contender, this 30-24 loss at the 49ers off the bye may be the final reality check that any talks of making the playoffs are now a longshot around The Star. With so many coaches on expiring contracts and, as always, players set to hit free agency where Dallas is more comfortable losing contributing players than adding from other teams, the entire purpose of this season is now hanging in the balance. It was hanging in the balance for all four quarters against the most beatable 49ers team this Cowboys team has seen in some time, but far too many of the miscues that have plagued this team all year were still present enough to let the win slip away. Simply being in the game won’t be good enough for the Cowboys to take many positives from this performance, as Mike Zimmer’s defense put up a valiant effort and showed some new looks with the extra time off but the offense did not. It is the offensive side of the ball where the Cowboys have less injuries to notable players, the two highest paid players on the team in Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb, and a play caller that is also the head coach in McCarthy. Their second half performance showed the ceiling for this team is likely being in games against better teams at times, but winning them is a different ask entirely. This was the Cowboys’ first road loss of the season, having previous wins at the Browns, Steelers, and Giants. They will look to quickly turn this around with a visit to the Atlanta Falcons next week, before putting their 0-3 home record to the test again against two teams with winning records in the Eagles and Texans. Before getting into any of that, or the latest noise that will surround a Cowboys team that settled into third in the NFC East on the same Sunday the Eagles dominated the Bengals and Commanders won on the last play of the game, here are a few notes on how this week eight primetime opportunity got away from them. Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images The Cowboys offense continues to make everything look so hard on themselves. For a team that put plenty of emphasis on the run game over the bye, continuing to play for third and manageable situations instead of being more aggressive on early downs is a head-scratching choice when the run game was left to Dalvin Cook in his team debut and Ezekiel Elliott against the 49ers. Rico Dowdle was made inactive upon arriving to the game with an illness. This shuffle in the backfield led to just a three yard increase in rushing yards from the Detroit loss, 56 yards compared to 53. It was the third time this season the Cowboys have rushed for less than 60 yards. Elliott was responsible for 34 of them on 10 carries and did score the team’s first touchdown. For comparison, 49ers rookie third-string back Isaac Guerendo outgained the Cowboys on the ground himself with 85 yards on 14 carries and a touchdown, while Brock Purdy came close with 56 yards on eight scramble attempts – also adding a rushing score. These are two teams that approached the game similarly from an offensive standpoint, wanting to give their QBs easy completions to mitigate the pass rush and negative plays, throw the ball over the middle of the field, and get something going in the run game. While these concepts came out of desperation for the Cowboys and haven’t been good enough to win all season, they are the bread-and-butter of what the 49ers do. San Francisco being able to finally settle into this game and pull ahead by simply executing what they do best is a tough look for the Cowboys if they have any hope of saving this season. Even many of the Cowboys’ short passes and screens used in this game felt slow developing and laborious, unable to test the 49ers down field until it was much too late. Taking the ball first again proved to be a mistake McCarthy refuses to learn from, as the Cowboys threw a second-and-long screen pass to Lamb to set up a third and five, just to hand the ball to fullback Hunter Luepke and get stopped. The 49ers took over, and when faced with a third down of their own, got