“Do your job, and at the end of the day, communicate,” Clark added. “. … I don’t think it was a problem with the physicality. I think, up front, we really played the blocks well, and most of the guys, what we’ve been talking about, too, is finding ways to do more. We’ve got to just do more.”
That “more” has to begin this week to avoid falling into the dreaded 0-2 start to the season, and 0-2 in the division to boot. That math would directly threaten the Cowboys’ plan for making the playoffs, and to make a run once there.
To be more specific, since the 1970 merger, only (roughly) 10 percent of NFL teams that began a season with two losses have recovered to make the playoffs.
“Oh, yeah, very urgent, very urgent,” said Pro Bowl pass rusher Rashan Gary. ”It’s another division game and, understanding that, we know we just went 0-1; and we can’t do that going into this week. The urgency is up, for sure.”
Clark agrees, and wholeheartedly.
“Every week’s got to be urgent, and we’ve got another divisional opponent, [so] we’ve got to get the dub this week for sure,” he added.
Everyone in the Cowboys’ locker room is taking full accountability for the failures at MetLife Stadium, and that’s a great start, but it only matters if it’s tied to the action needed to make the necessary corrections toward success.
The debut of defensive coordinator Christian Parker was a forgettable one, but Clark, like All-Pro Quinnen Williams and rookie 11th-overall pick Caleb Downs said in their post-game interview, is putting the blame squarely on the players and the need for them to be critical of themselves, and no one else.
“It’s definitely not what we were coached,” Clark said. “It’s not … The biggest thing is we’ve got to attack the week and make sure we get all of that handled. The best thing about it is it’s all stuff that we can control, and we’ll get that fixed.”
It was inevitable that with sweeping changes in both the coaching staff and on the defensive depth chart, it would take time for the unit to gel perfectly, something that could take several games to materialize but, that said, the Cowboys can’t afford to lose games while that gets sorted.
Gary, Clark, Williams and the entirety of the defense understand this reality quite well, so the push for it to all come together has become right now, not down the road.
“We’re a couple plays away, man,” Gary said. “It could be this game coming up. Being able to have all of us on the same page, and understanding where we went wrong and what needs to be fixed. We’ve been taking steps in the right direction.”