Getty Mike McCarthy, Cowboys
It wasn’t easy — it was historically difficult, in fact — but a win is a win is a win for Mike McCarthy, his first as the Dallas Cowboys‘ head coach.
Fittingly, McCarthy received the game ball amid a raucous locker room in the wake of Sunday’s 40-39 triumph over the Atlanta Falcons. The moment was captured for posterity.
“Great finish. Keep fighting. Great lesson. Big chunk of confidence, men,” McCarthy told his players in a video shared via the team’s official Twitter account. “We were able to carry through. Good stuff, good stuff.”
McCarthy then asked defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence to break things down. Lawrence had other ideas.
“Coach, we want to give you this game ball for your first win as a Dallas Cowboy,” he told McCarthy, the room erupting. “The first one is always the hardest one, baby.”
Celebrating Coach McCarthy’s first of many wins as a 🤠
Behind a record-setting effort from quarterback Dak Prescott, the Cowboys erased a three-touchdown second-half deficit and scored 16 points in the final five minutes to stun Atlanta on a 46-yard, last-second field goal by Greg Zuerlein.
Prescott completed 34-of-47 passes for 450 yards and one touchdown. He added three TDs on the ground, becoming the first NFL QB to throw for 400-plus yards and account for a troika of rushing scores in a single game, per Elias Sports Bureau.
Dallas limped into intermission trailing 29-10. Their performance to that point was bleak; the outcome bleaker. After an excruciating Week 1 loss to Los Angeles, their season — although early — was on the brink, with a road date in Seattle (2-0) looming next Sunday.
But for a club with Super Bowl aspirations, the adversity proved to be a wagon-circling moment, propelling the Cowboys to one of the most improbable comebacks in recent memory.
Like McCarthy conveyed, it’s a surefire confidence-builder going forward. But the team’s collective confidence was building well before Zuerlein’s kick sailed through the uprights.
“This is huge. Coach McCarthy said at halftime, ‘We need to be here. We need to be right where we are.’ He said the final score didn’t matter as much as finding out the type of men that we have, the type of fight we have within this team. This does so much,” Prescott said after the game, per The Athletic.
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