Dallas Cowboys fans were not happy.
Their team had just lost to the San Francisco 49ers in embarrassing fashion, botching a comeback with a highly-questionable final play. They reacted by throwing trash onto the field at AT&T Stadium as the officiating crew and players exited down the tunnel.
One video captures the garbage hitting a Cowboys player in the helmet.
When asked about the debris tossing, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott at first disparaged the fans, thinking they were throwing the bottles and garbage at the players. But when he was informed that the intended target were the referees, who played their own role in the endgame debacle, he switched his tone.
“A credit to them then,” Prescott said, per Michael Gehlken of the Dallas Morning News.
Prescott and the Cowboys nearly came back in spectacular fashion from a 16-point deficit entering the fourth quarter of the contest at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, but the disastrous decision to run the ball with 14 seconds remaining and no timeouts doomed them.
Here’s how it went down: The Cowboys, who entered the fourth quarter trailing by 16 points, were down by 6 points when they got the ball back at their 20-yard line with 32 seconds remaining. Quarterback Dak Prescott methodically moved his team down the field, gaining 39 yards in three plays in 18 seconds, setting up at the San Francisco 41-yard line with 14 seconds to go.
Facing a 2nd-and-1, the Cowboys had enough time to take couple of Hail Mary shots into the endzone. Instead, Prescott attempted to exploit San Francisco’s defense, which had numerous players on the boundary and left the middle of the field open. He took off running and gained 17 yards, but he also used too much time. By the time he spiked the ball to stop the clock, there was no time left and the game was over.
Watch the play here.
“We felt strongly this game was going to come down to key situations in the end. It’s disappointing we didn’t get a shot there at the end,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said. “These last two plays, all those scenarios, we put a tremendous amount of time into it. We had a lot of confidence trying to set up that last play, but yes, our execution was not where we would have liked it to have been, clearly.
“I have never seen that come down the way it came down as far as the collision between the umpire and the quarterback. We were trying to get inside the 30-yard line to set up hte last play. The mechanics were intact, I felt, from our end of it. Communication that I was given on the sideline when they were reviewing it is they were going to put time back on the clock. The next thing I know, they’re running off the field. That’s all the facts I know.”
The 49ers advanced with the victory. They’ll face the No. 1 overall seed Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the NFC Divisional Round.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, as usual, was blunt in his assessment of the result.
“Extraordinarily disappointed. Very disappointed. Disappointed for our fans. …This is quite a letdown,” he said, according to Gehlken. “They outplayed us.”
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Brian Fonseca may be reached at bfonseca@njadvancemedia.com.