4 Cowboys on Thin Ice After Sunday Night Football Loss to 49ers

Continuing the trend of only playing in blowouts this season, the Dallas Cowboys were on the wrong end of one against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday Night, receiving a 42-10 thrashing.

This one somehow hurts more than the Arizona Cardinals loss. That game felt like a fluke, and like the team maybe wasn't taking it seriously enough. But the 49ers matchup was supposed to be a potential NFC Championship preview. Dallas' first big test of the season. A chance to prove this Cowboys team can be Super Bowl bound.

Losing this one will have much bigger consequences in the locker room.

These five people in particular need to be very careful after the loss, because they're now on thin ice in Dallas.

1. Mike McCarthy

Both losses this season have come with a distinct feeling that the Cowboys were outcoached, and that's not something Jerry Jones is going to ignore.

I'm not saying Mike McCarthy is about to be the first head coach fired this season, but his long-term future in Dallas is far from guaranteed, and games like this one are pushing the team much closer to having to take action.

It's hard to look good against the 49ers defense, sure, but the offense looked more than just overmatched. It looked uninspired, and the playcalling was all over the place.

McCarthy gets some credit for the way he's getting KaVontae Turpin involved, but it's not like that touchdown was some genius play design — it was simply Turpin being too fast to cover. And beyond that, the Cowboys' offense looked anemic all night.

Add in that the red zone issues from the Cardinals loss already looked squarely to be at McCarthy's feet, and suddenly there's going to be a lot riding on how well he performs over the next few weeks.