Cowboys’ calling card of defeat showed up again in disappointing loss to Green Bay

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Homecoming celebrations don’t always go as swimmingly as one would like, but they are seldom as downright cruel as Mike McCarthy’s return to Lambeau Field proved to be late Sunday when Dallas’ 14-point fourth quarter lead vanished in a 31-28 Packers overtime win.

Dallas led 28-14 early in the fourth quarter before Aaron Rodgers and a powerful run game manufactured touchdowns on drives of 76 and 89 yards against a once-scary Cowboys defense. In overtime, the Cowboys won the toss but were stopped on a fourth-and-3 at the Packers 35 when a desperate Dak Prescott pass fell incomplete.

The Cowboys could have tried a 53-yard field goal into the wind — McCarthy said the club was right on the border line for trying one — but, of course, even a successful field goal would not have ended the game.

”I felt like we needed to score [a touchdown] the way the game was going,” McCarthy said.

And although Green Bay won the game minutes later on Mason Crosby’s 28-yard field goal, the way the Packers were driving the ball, it’s crazy to say they could not have scored a touchdown if needed to put the overtime game away.

Watching Rodgers perform his magic act one more time against Dallas — this time from the opposing sideline — had to be particularly painful for McCarthy given that Green Bay was trying to escape from a five-game losing streak while the Cowboys, fresh off a bye week, were eager to chase down the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC East.

McCarthy insists they still are despite a loss that dropped them to 6-3, three games behind the unbeaten Eagles in the loss column.

“I’m not worried about that at all,” McCarthy said. “There’s a lot of football left, we just crossed the halfway line. If we take care of our own business, we’ll get where we want to go.”

He’s ignoring the fact that anything beyond a wild-card playoff run now looks like an extreme long shot for Dallas. Not only are the Cowboys chasing the 8-0 Eagles, their next two games are against teams that run the ball just as effectively as the Packers do and have much better records. Minnesota is 8-1 after a confidence-boosting win at Buffalo, and the Giants are 7-2. Then come the Indianapolis Colts, hardly a great team at 4-5-1, but Jonathan Taylor returned from injury with a 147-yard rushing day against Las Vegas Sunday.

The Packers got 207 yards on the ground with Aaron Jones, who once had a four-touchdown game against Dallas, piling up 138 yards and setting up the winning field goal. Then there was Rodgers, throwing just 20 passes but producing 224 yards and three touchdowns, all to rookie Christian Watson whose coming-out party (he had zero touchdowns in the first nine games) trumped CeeDee Lamb’s 150-yard day.

The Rodgers numbers against Dallas border on the staggering. Fans have vivid memories of the playoff defeats after the 2014 and 2016 seasons, but Rodgers is now 8-2 in 10 games against the Cowboys with 18 touchdown passes and two interceptions.

”There were a lot of demons exorcized today, it’s just a coincidence Dallas was involved,’’ Rodgers said. “Although myself and the other Aaron have had some pretty good performances through the years against Dallas.”

The Cowboys defense has rarely looked this overmatched in the Dan Quinn Era, and the offense didn’t exactly ride to the rescue in that unit’s favor. After the Packers tied the game at 28-28, Dallas got the ball back with 2:29 left in regulation. A big-time offense with that much on the clock and timeouts in the pocket marches for a winning field goal and heads for the bus.

The Cowboys went three-and-out and nearly gave Green Bay the opportunity to win before the overtime period.

While Lamb had his biggest day as a Cowboy, Dak Prescott shrunk in Rodgers’ shadow. Prescott threw 46 times for 265 yards (less than 6 yards per attempt compared to Rodgers’ 11.2) and was intercepted twice by safety Rudy Ford, who had one career interception before Sunday. The interceptions basically represented a 10-point turnaround in a game that found its way into overtime before being decided.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat it, there’s nothing else to add on,” Prescott said. “We wanted to get this win for Mike.”

The Cowboys also lost the penalty yards battle, 83-40, causing McCarthy to shout that he was “very, very, VERY frustrated” with that aspect of the game although he seemed to focus more on the officials than his players. In an overtime that lasted less than seven minutes, the Cowboys were penalized three times.

“We were totally in control of the game from our viewpoint,” McCarthy said. Then, the Packers’ running game took charge one more time.

”That’s the calling card against us,” McCarthy said. “We knew that coming in.”

The Vikings and the Giants are going to play the same cards in the next 11 days. Dallas has to discover an answer if it wants to keep an entire season from turning into a disappearing act.

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