Dak Prescott says 'No confidence lost with loss' for 3-1 Cowboys

Dak Prescott says 'No confidence lost with loss' for 3-1 Cowboys

FRISCO - Can the Dallas Cowboys' confidence at 3-1 exist at the same high level it did when the team was undefeated? Dak Prescott says it is so.

“We’ve got a great team,” Prescott said in the wake of Sunday night's 12-10 loss at New Orleans. “There’s no confidence lost with this loss, I can promise you that.''

Cowboys Nation would like to hold Dak and company to that promise ... while at the same time hoping that the confidence is about the fixable mistakes that were make (in execution for certain and arguably in game-planning and play-calling, too) and not about the "stubborn arrogance'' that was a calling card of this offensive staff under deposed offensive coordinator Scott Linehan.

Linehan and his boss Jason Garrett in recent years often responded to criticism by responding with expressions of how confident they were in their beliefs and their teachings. In fairness, that group in the last few years won an awful lot of regular-season games; so it's not as if they are "bad'' coaches or teachers.

But Prescott hits just the right note to soothe the Cowboys fan unhappy with the 10-point production (which came on the heels of a three-week span during which Dallas started 3-0 with one of the most consistently explosive 30-points-per-game threats in the NFL) by conceding to the mistakes made.

Maybe things work out OK this week because Cam Fleming is fine in place of the injured Tyron Smith (story coming), and maybe they work out OK this week because as we wrote on Tuesday, the possibility of a return of receiver Michael Gallup in time to oppose Green Bay is very real. (See story here.)

Did they fumble too much? Yup. Did they fail to exploit New Orleans' run-stopping weaknesses? Yup. Did they try to run too often, especially on early downs, and refuse to go away from that and back to an offense that in Week 1 against the Giants threw the ball on 70 percent of their first- and second-down plays? Garrett refuses to concede that publicly. But as I write here in "Fuzzy Math,'' that doesn't mean concessions and evaluations and self-scouting aren't happening behind coaches' closed doors.

They are.

"There are a lot of things we’ll take from this that we’ll learn from and become a better team because of it,'' Dak said as the team turns it attention to a Week 5 visit from the Packers. "That’s the most important thing.”

If that's the truth, then Cowboys fans can have the same confidence Dak has that "There’s no confidence lost with this loss.''