Quarterback Dak Prescott said ahead of the 2026 season that it’s Super Bowl or bust this year. Cut to eight weeks into the season, the Dallas Cowboys are struggling at 3-5. Their most recent loss to the Arizona Cardinals had NBC’s Mike Tomlin make quite a sobering claim about how Dallas performed.

“I saw a bunch of blinkers,” Tomlin said, via Awful Announcing. “And what I mean by that, I say if you’re a blinker, cut your eyelids off.

“What I mean is, you gotta relish the thick moments. You gotta want to make the play. As an individual and as a unit within a team. And watching the end of that game, I didn’t see individuals or particular units that wanted to grab the bull by the horns and win the game.”

Dallas blew a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter, that too after the Cardinals had benched starting quarterback Jacoby Brissett. Backup QB Gardner Minshew fought back strongly with three touchdowns in the final quarter alone. Dallas managed to score another touchdown before Arizona tied the score at 30. But in overtime, Dallas failed to make it to Arizona territory, and Prescott was sacked too.

In the final drive, the Cardinals rallied and scored a field goal, upsetting the Cowboys. This made for the second such upset for Dallas, already having suffered earlier in the season when Tampa Bay defeated them 24-16.

The fact that the Cowboys struggled to function under pressure led Tomlin to come up with that brutal jab. This was a game that should have been won, as Prescott stated after the Bucs loss.

The Cowboys made several important defensive plays in the first half. Caleb Downs stopped Arizona on fourth down at the goal line, while Shemar James intercepted Brissett and returned the ball to the 5-yard line to set up a Dallas touchdown. But it was not enough, as Dallas could only look on helplessly when Minshew came into the attack.

Schottenheimer knew that Dallas did not take opportunity of things when it was required.

“It was a tale of two halves, for sure,” Schottenheimer said after the game. “What I told the guys is we obviously have to learn to finish in all three phases. We had a chance to do it a lot of different ways. Got to get stops on defense. Had a four-minute opportunity that we didn’t seize to try to put the game away. Had a chance for a long field goal before the end of the first half. I think it’s all three phases, it really was a tale of two halves. And the second half was not good enough. When you have people down, you’ve got to finish them, and that’s the most disappointing thing.”

It’s high time that the Dallas Cowboys wake up. If this is the result against teams that they should be defeating, one can only wonder how the Cowboys will fare against the Indianapolis Colts and the Tennessee Titans.

The post “Cut Their Eyelids Off”: Mike Tomlin Slams Cowboys Players' Mentality After Disappointing OT Loss to Cardinals appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.