The Dallas Cowboys had high hopes coming into this season – and they still do – but those were dampened after a 42-10 blowout loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday Night Football. Despite being one of the top contenders in the NFC, Dallas is now 3-2 through five weeks.
Andrew Fillipponi said that Sunday night's loss in San Francisco is just the latest example of the Cowboys being "frauds and paper champions" on the Audacy original podcast "1st & Pod" this week.
"We've both been dead wrong about Dallas. You in the more big-picture sense that you thought that they were a team that was right up there with the cream of the crop in the NFC. They're clearly not," Fillipponi said (3:45 in player above). "And I'm wrong in that in the short-term I thought that they were going to play a close game and even win (Sunday) against the 49ers.
"It really is, I think, a come to Jesus moment for everything that's going on there in Dallas with McCarthy and Dak Prescott and this idea in Dallas that McCarthy needed to push out Kellen Moore in order to maximize Dak Prescott, that that was going to be what untapped them. This was the game you circled when the schedule came out 'OK, let's see if you're for real or not.' You lose by 32."
It wasn't just the offense that struggled in San Francisco. The 49ers scored at least one touchdown in every quarter in the rout.
"Also, their defense – look, the Diggs injury in practice a couple of weeks ago was obviously a killer – but you retained your defensive coordinator, Dan Quinn, and gave him a lot of money with the idea that he was going to interview for NFL head coaching jobs and you had someone that gave you a huge competitive edge because that guy was so good at his job that it was going to keep you in games like this and you gave up 42 here," Fillipponi continued.
"This is San Francisco's best offensive game of the year and I think most football experts or most football fans thought coming into this game that maybe at-worst Dallas was a top-five defense, top-eight defense to get just blown out like this."
The Cowboys started the season strong with back-to-back blowout wins against New York teams. Since then, however, they've lost to the Cardinals, beat the Patriots, and now got blown out by the 49ers.
"Since '95 they've largely been frauds and paper champions," Fillipponi said, "and this game was just the latest example of that."
Dallas has another primetime matchup on tap as the Cowboys head to Los Angeles to face the Chargers on Monday night.
