Mike McCarthy explains why he BENCHED Dante Fowler
The Cowboys dropped their exhibition opener.
The Football Feed
Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy was visibly frustrated with the 17 penalties that his team committed during their exhibition opener against the Denver Broncos this weekend. Of course, one of the negatives of their campaign last year was their penalty trouble, and it wasn't encouraging to see the same story continue.
"This is preseason," he said afterward. "I don't think this has anything to do with last year. But I didn't like the number of penalties. I made it clear. I talked about it at halftime and I talked about it briefly in there (the locker room). We'll take a long look at it."
Fans noticed that veteran defensive end Dante Fowler Jr. didn't play after he committed a personal foul in the 2nd quarter, leading directly to a Broncos touchdown. And afterward, McCarthy explained that was the reason that Fowler was benched.
“That’s a discipline penalty,” a frustrated McCarthy explained to after the game, per the team site. “Frankly, that’s why Dante was done for the night after that. We can’t have that.”
McCarthy also said that he felt that the errors committed during the opener were simply due to the younger players understandably not being acclimated to the NFL level of competition.
"I think this is kind of how it goes," he said. "We played a lot of young players on Thursday (in the joint practice) and today. And I have great confidence that they'll improve from this opportunity."
