Cowboys' last-ditch plays against Niners never have a prayer
For the second straight season, the Dallas Cowboys — the team that popularized the “Hail Mary” pass almost 50 years ago — never even had a prayer of heaving it into the end zone against the San Francisco 49ers.
Meltdowns by coach Mike McCarthy and blunders by tight end Dalton Schultz kept the Cowboys from setting themselves up for something similar to Roger Staubach's 50-yard game-winning heave in the waning moments that stunned the Minnesota Vikings in a 1975 playoff game.
What we saw instead was this a gadget play with running back Ezekiel Elliott alone at center with no offensive linemen anywhere near him and Prescott in shotgun with 76 yards to go and 6 seconds left Sunday.
Elliott was bowled over as soon as he got off the low snap and 49ers cornerback Jimmie Ward blew up Prescott's pass to wide receiver Kavontae Turpin.
“Very strange,” 49ers linebacker Fred Warner mused. “I don’t know if they planned to be in that situation, obviously, because it didn’t work very well. We prepare for everything. When you got players like Jimmie Ward who just come and (blow up plays) it makes it easy. We prepare for everything.”
Not so the Cowboys.
A year ago, Dallas bungled the final drive in a 23-17 wild-card loss to the 49ers at home when Prescott ran a 14-yard quarterback draw with 14 seconds and no timeouts left and then handed the ball to his center instead of the umpire, who's the only one who can spot the ball.
That ate up too much time and Prescott never got a chance to chuck the ball into the end zone before time ran out on the Cowboys' season.
On Sunday, the breakdowns came in bunches for the Cowboys, the final play only the capstone of a comedy of missteps and miscalculations by Dallas, who failed to make it past the divisional round for a 26th straight season.
“I...