What did Mike McCarthy say to the players during team meeting after big loss to Detroit?

The Cowboys players and coaches were back at theStaronMonday after experiencing the worst loss in the 35-year history of Jerry Jones’ ownership, a 47-9 defeat Sunday to Detroit.

Head coach Mike McCarthy said that he gave roughly half a dozen questions to the team to think on during the week in order to be ready to hit the practice field on Oct. 21 in preparation for the San Francisco 49ers.

“I gave them a number of questions today as far as things to think about and make sure that they are reflecting,” McCarthy said during a conference call with the media late Monday afternoon. “Make sure they are looking in the mirror and just make sure you’re filling in the blanks. Because why are we on this ebb and flow? Why do we perform seven days ago the way we performed at 1 o’clock in the morning and then come home and perform the way we did? So those are the kinds of things we’ve got to work, focus on.”

In team meetings and personnel meetings that ran longer than usual, pushing his scheduled press conference back by more than two hours, McCarthy emphasized the basics and fundamentals in order to right the ship.

“Our basics are not in order,” McCarthy said. “It’s stating the obvious, it starts with the turnover ratio. Fundamentals of football are part of your everyday existence in this game. We cannot function where we are as far as the number of giveaways and lack of takeaways.”

“So really, I just kept it about football. The technique, fundamentals and how you improve that, the focus with that. The number of moving parts. Regardless of that, we need to be more connected, more uniform. Just kept it about the things we did do, didn’t do and make sure the direction was clear and the direction we’re going.”

The assessment doesn’t just stop with the players, as McCarthy and his staff are also planning on doing some self-reflection on how the team was prepared going into the game against Detroit.

“We have to take a hard look at the way we played that game,” he said. “That’s what we’ve done as a staff. Did we try to get into a sprint with a car that was going faster than we were, that we couldn’t keep up with? Just all those things. I think you have to look at all that, reassess…We’ll have a good plan to go out there in San Francisco, get that win.”