Cowboys’ postgame locker room sounded like saddest place ever after 49ers loss
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Cowboys QB Dak Prescott reacts during 19-12 loss to the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium on Jan. 22, 2023, in Santa Clara, Calif.
When Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones emerged from the locker room Sunday night following a second straight playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers, he looked like a mess.
“We’re sick. Just sick. Sick,” a watery-eyed Jones told reporters.
“This is very sickening to not win tonight,” he later added, before licking his lips. Jones looked very much on the verge of a breakdown after the Cowboys’ 19-12 defeat at Levi’s Stadium, and according to the beat reporter pool, he was not alone. Descriptions of the Cowboys’ locker room were beyond bleak. Jones himself characterized it as “a locker room full of sick players.”
A Cowboys beat writer described one player’s letting out “a heaving cry.”
“To see our main guys like JK (Jayron Kearse) crying like that and these guys hurting, it’s because they gave it all,” safety Malik Hooker told the Dallas Morning News.
Videos of despondent Dallas players returning to the locker room were equally hard to watch, including Cowboys All-Pro safety Trevon Diggs, who looked catatonic as he walked into the locker room — the last player to leave the field.
A Dallas TV sports anchor described Diggs as “very emotional” as he sat with a towel on his head for the entire time the Cowboys were in the locker room postgame.
And then there was Dallas running back Tony Pollard on crutches and in a walking boot, hobbling to the team bus after breaking his leg in the first half.
All of it was in stark contrast to last week’s Dallas locker room, where head coach Mike McCarthy showed off his dance moves while rocking a giant silver chain with a Cowboys star logo hanging from it following a 31-14 shellacking of the Bucs in the wild-card round:
Dallas finished its season 13-6 and failed to reach the NFC championship for the 27th straight year. The 49ers, meanwhile, were all smiles and already focused on the Philadelphia Eagles — whom they’ll face Sunday in Philly at noon with a spot in the Super Bowl on the line.