On a night when so many things went wrong for the Cowboys, it’s easy (maybe even “lazy,” to recycle a recent buzzword from around these parts) to pin the team’s 30-24 loss in San Francisco on the two interceptions thrown by quarterback Dak Prescott.

The league’s highest-paid player now has eight picks through seven games, a figure currently topped by only three passers. That’s one less than Prescott threw all of last season, and it puts him ahead of his career-worst 2022 pace, when he had seven picks in his first seven games en route to a league-leading 15 total.

Perhaps most troubling, though: Week 8 marked the third straight game in which Prescott has tossed multiple picks, the first time in his career he’s had a stretch that long.

Prescott was quick to take personal responsibility for the miscues, Todd Brock of Cowboys Wire reports.

“I don’t have to be perfect,” he said in his postgame press conference, “but I damn sure can’t be having the turnovers.”

Winning the turnover battle was a “huge, blinking light” for head coach Mike McCarthy during the team’s bye week; Dallas came into Sunday night’s contest with a minus-six differential in the category. After Prescott’s two giveaways in Santa Clara, the Cowboys are minus-eight; only the Raiders and Titans (three combined wins this season) are worse.

Good teams simply aren’t bad in that stat.

“[We] put ourselves behind in the turnover battle, and that’s on me,” Prescott said. “Can’t have that if we plan to win games, and I’ve got to clean that up, period.”

But McCarthy pointed out that the breakdown was bigger than just his passer, especially on the first-quarter deep ball attempt.

“When you look at interceptions, you can grade them, put them in buckets and categories,” McCarthy told reporters Sunday night. “The first one, he had pressure in the B-gap, hits his feet, which took him late, the safety got a jump on the ball, so he wasn’t able to get it to the back pylon.”

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