DALLAS — The Denver Broncos laid out the blueprint for how to beat the Dallas Cowboys in Week 9 with a 30-16 beatdown at AT&T Stadium. The Cowboys fell down as far as 30-0 midway through the fourth quarter before they started mounting an ultimately futile comeback.
The way receiver Amari Cooper sees it, the Cowboys have a blueprint of their own when it comes to returning to their winning ways. Dallas ripped off a six-game winning streak after their Week 1 loss at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
"I think this year, it’s easier, to be honest, to put a game like that behind us because when you’ve had so much success, we’ve won six games in a row," Cooper explained to "G-Bag Nation" on 105.3 "The Fan" Thursday. "Okay, we know what it takes to win. And when you lose, when you haven’t lost a lot, you can easily identify why that happened."
For quarterback Dak Prescott, who went 19-of-39 for 232 yards, two touchdowns, an interception, and was sacked twice, the loss to the Broncos left a bitter reminder that has motivated him throughout the week.
"It’s just about wanting to feel that win again," Prescott told reporters Thursday. "That’s the addictive drug part about it, right? It’s trying to get that high of getting that win, of getting that locker room feeling, and then when you compare that with the locker room Sunday, they’re not even comparable. You just want to do everything you can to make sure you’re putting your team and yourself in the position to get back to that feeling."
What coach Mike McCarthy has emphasized in his tenure with the Cowboys is the concept of self-scouting. For Cooper, he compared a drop he had in the game against Denver to the overall failure against the Broncos.
"It’s like I haven’t dropped that many balls this year. So, I could easily identify what I did wrong, because I know what I’ve done right when I’ve caught the ball. So, it’s the same thing as a team. We know what we’ve done right when we’ve won, and, so, when we lost, especially in the fashion that we lost, it’s just easy to identify why it was," said Cooper.
The Cowboys are catching a Falcons team that is riding the momentum of a key road win against the New Orleans Saints. The Falcons are 4-4 and need every win that they can scrape together as they attempt to stay competitive with the Saints and the Buccaneers in a thick NFC South division race.
Meanwhile, the Cowboys, if they hope to earn the No. 1 overall seed in the conference and the only bye in the NFC, can ill afford to sustain another loss.
Are you still worried about the Cowboys after their showing in Week 9? Share your thoughts with Mark on Twitter @therealmarklane.
