Mike McCarthy's 1st season in Dallas coming apart over turnovers

ARLINGTON, Texas — Mike McCarthy is a big believer in winning the turnover battle.

His first season as coach of the Dallas Cowboys is coming apart because of how badly his team is losing that battle.

Dallas is minus-12 in turnover margin, the worst in the NFL through six games since 2013 and the worst for the franchise since its inaugural — and winless — season of 1960.

The Cowboys (2-4) committed four turnovers without getting one in a 38-10 loss to Arizona on Monday night, and they take no solace in being in first place in the woeful NFC East heading into Sunday’s visit to division rival Washington.

“I have a continuing issue with ball security on my football team,” said McCarthy, a Greenfield native. “That’s something I personally take a lot of pride in and how it reflects on how you play the game of football. I’m not getting it done right now.”

Ezekiel Elliott has five fumbles (four lost), already within one of the two-time rushing champion’s career high for a full season from 2018. Andy Dalton threw two interceptions in his first start replacing injured star quarterback Dak Prescott.

“In practice, I’ve been focusing in on just kinda keeping it tight and not having it loose,” Elliott said. “I don’t know. I need to figure something out.”

The Cardinals scored 24 points off those turnovers, and 13 of Dallas’ NFL-leading 15 giveaways have led to points — 11 of them touchdowns. The only two this season that didn’t result in points were interceptions near the game’s end.

The 84 points off turnovers given up by the Cowboys are also a reflection of a defense that has slipped to 31st against the run and allowed at least 250 yards rushing in two of the past three games. For the season, Dallas is allowing 5.15 yards per carry.

“We turned the ball over. We didn’t handle the adversity of it,” McCarthy said. “These are things that have gone on so far this year and we need to turn it (around) because it’s affecting the outcome of games clearly.”

Prescott gave the Cowboys chances to win despite deficits of 15 points or worse in three straight games. While Dalton led two fourth-quarter drives to field goals to beat the New York Giants two weeks ago, he never provided the sense Dallas could recover from 21-0 down in the second quarter against Kyler Murray and the Cardinals.

Dalton was fortunate he didn’t have at least two more interceptions on several ill-advised throws. One came early, and Arizona linebacker Jordan Hicks was the only remotely close to the ball.

He couldn’t hang on to the ball, and probably would have scored if he had. Also, the analytics don’t look good compared to Prescott on throws without pressure and getting the ball down the field.