SANTA CLARA, Calif. — This is where the truth stalks the Dallas Cowboys.
If Sunday night wasn't just another game, as head coach Mike McCarthy professed in the run-up against the San Francisco 49ers, then this cannot just be another loss. And if last year's playoff loss to the 49ers was something thought about daily, as Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said last week, then Sunday night might crawl into some nights, too. That's how rough this moment was for the Cowboys —The eventual No.
At the expense of meticulously picking apart a final score that doesn’t really require an autopsy to figure out what went wrong, here’s the baseline of what we learned from 42-10: Against a team like the 49ers, who bring a deep and talented offense and a wicked defense to the table, falling behind 14-0 early in the second quarter on the road is not an option. Failing to establish the run and sustain drives with physicality is not an option.
That's what faces Dallas now. Because the simple truth is we no longer can be sure the gap between them and the 49ers is simply a matter of not executing perfectly. Now it's fair to wonder if the talent gap is more pronounced than what we were led to believe. Maybe it's no longer feasible to just put Prescott's name next to Brock Purdy and easily answer which is the better player.
While all of that talent is a known commodity for the Cowboys, the unknown was not seeing it as exponentially better when the two teams stepped on a field. That has to ring a little different now, particularly when McCarthy and so many players had no sense of Sunday’s outcome being realistic.
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