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It doesn’t seem to matter if the Cowboys’ first team, second team, or third team are on the field, they will commit penalties. Far too many penalties.
The Cowboys led the league last season with 153, 11 more than any other team, of which 127 were accepted, according to NFLpenalties.com. Dallas continued that trend with another 14 flags in the wildcard loss to the 49ers.
Coach Mike McCarthy said this offseason that eliminating the penalties is a goal for this season.
It hasn’t happened yet.
In Saturday’s preseason game against the Broncos, the Cowboys had 17 penalties for 129 yards, the most penalties for any team in the first week of preseason. According to Fox Sports’ David Helman, the league average this week was 6.6 penalties.
“The penalties are clearly way too high,” McCarthy said of a team transcript. “We’re going to look at these and continue going through, down to combative versus disciplined. This is clearly the biggest minus (from the game).”
However, McCarthy doesn’t think the penalties in Saturday night’s preseason game have anything to do with the penalty problems the team had in 2021.
“I think we all realize that this isn’t the regular season,” McCarthy said. “I understand your question, but last year was last year. I think last year it took us a while to establish a playstyle and an identity and when we did that we won a bunch of games. This is really the starting point that you go through every year.
“This is pre-season. I don’t think that has anything to do with last year. But I didn’t like the number of penalties. I made it clear. I talked about it at half-time and I talked about it briefly there (in the dressing room). We’ll look at it for a long time.”