Dak Prescott and the Cowboys left their fans with a final play to remember Sunday night as their season came to an end in the divisional round in a 19–12 road loss to the 49ers.
Down seven with five seconds left in the game, the Dallas offense took the field on their own 24-yard line looking to drum up some magic to erase the deficit. Instead, the end result turned out to be a play that quickly went from looking like a possible stroke of offensive wizardry to an embarrassing low note worthy of a replay for all the wrong reasons.
Prescott lined up in a shotgun formation ready to receive the snap from running back Ezekiel Elliott, who lined up as the center … yes, you read that correctly. Elliott was the only “offensive lineman” near Prescott, who was flanked by rookie back Malik Davis on the play while the rest of the actual O-line lined up out wide next to the receivers.
From there, Elliott proceeded to get ran over by Niners linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair as Prescott fired a pass to receiver KaVontae Turpin, who who was then laid out by cornerback Jimmie Ward before he could attempt a lateral as time expired. Yikes.
While the play clearly didn’t work out in Dallas’s favor in the slightest, the poor execution was likely far worse than anyone on the team would’ve ever imagined. But, on the plus side for the Cowboys and their fans, the finish was, at the very least, much less controversial than last year’s postseason exit.
The bizarre game-ending sequence ignited a wave of reaction on Twitter as NFL Twitter weighed in on the questionable play call by Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. Needless to say, Dallas may want to consider throwing that play out of the book for good over the offseason after it became the lasting image of its 2022 playoff run.
