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During the third quarter of their game against the Washington Football Team the Dallas Cowboys saw, for the second time in two weeks, their starting quarterback go down with an obvious injury. It was a scary sight to see.
Andy Dalton tried to do what he could to run for a first down and slid when the time was right for him as all quarterbacks are coached to do. Washington linebacker Jon Bostic was the perpetrator of the hit on Dalton, a very clear and obvious dirty play, and as a result for his actions he was ejected from the game.
Things picked up rather normally for the Cowboys as far as the rest of the game was concerned. The appropriate backup, rookie Ben DiNucci, entered the game and finished the losing effort. It seems as if Mike McCarthy may have taken issue with that and that is rather interesting.
Is Mike McCarthy calling out his players with his words about Jon Bostic?
There is a lot of intensity in the game of football and obviously tempers tend to flare at times in games. We have seen Cowboys players get into skirmishes over time and go to bat for their teammates in times of disagreement.
In the immediate aftermath of Bostic’s hit on Dalton it didn’t seem like any Cowboys players got in the former’s face about it. Head coach Mike McCarthy was asked about this after the game and noted that this wasn’t “the response you would expect.”
Mike McCarthy on no Cowboys players getting in Jon Bostic's face after his dirty hit on Andy Dalton: "We speak all the time about playing for one another, protecting one another. It definitely was not the response you would expect."
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) October 25, 2020
It certainly would not have been strange to see any Cowboys player get into Bostic’s face as, again, the hit from him was very obviously dirty and of poor sportsmanship. McCarthy specifically calling that out when meeting with the media is a curious move in general, but it is particularly interesting after the first game following the anonymous report of discontent between players and coaches on the team.
Perhaps McCarthy wants to see a fiery sort of team that will act in defense of one another, their team, the logo on their helmet, and all of that other type of stuff. Maybe he is trying to instill that message with the group and it is falling on deaf ears.
Either way, this is as much of a call out from McCarthy to the players as we have seen this season. After another embarrassing effort it will be worth monitoring to see how things shake out.