Michael Irvin didn’t hold back after the Cowboys’ ugly loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and he made it clear he had no problem with the fan in the tunnel who called it “embarrassing.”
The moment that set everything off came after the game, when someone walking through the tunnel was overheard saying “embarrassing” as Dak Prescott headed to the locker room. Prescott fired back in the viral video, but the comment clearly hit a nerve around Dallas - and Irvin said the person behind it was only saying what plenty of Cowboys fans were already thinking.
“Go put some fire on them dudes that was in that damn uniform!” Irvin said on his podcast. “That's what I'm talking about, man.”
He didn’t stop there. Irvin connected that tunnel shot directly to the long frustration surrounding the Cowboys’ latest flop.
“When that guy yelled 'embarrassing,' he was talking about you got everybody hoping and waiting that this is going to be different and it came out the same damn way it has always been over the last 30 years,” Irvin added. “I had no issues with that man yelling 'embarrassing' because it was embarrassing.”
For Irvin, the bigger problem wasn’t the comment - it was Prescott choosing that moment to respond instead of directing that energy at Tampa Bay.
“And I always say, you can have fight in you, make sure you know who and when to fight,” Irvin said. “And fighting (the embarrassing guy) was not the damn fight.
Fighting them boys on the football field was the fight. And you ran from that fight.”
Irvin later said the loss hit him hard emotionally, before a different result helped lift his mood.
“I was depressed, I was mad, I was hurt, I was in a grave, buried,” he said, before noting that the Philadelphia Eagles’ botched game against the Jacksonville Jaguars cheered him up.
That reaction tracks with the mood around Dallas after a night that fell flat against a Buccaneers team that was on the road and starting an undrafted rookie quarterback in primetime. The Cowboys didn’t show up, and Prescott’s decision to answer the heckler only made the moment look worse.
Irvin’s message matched the temperature of the fan base: the frustration is real, the defense has changed a lot, and the results still haven’t changed enough. For Cowboys supporters, it’s the same old story, and Irvin said it plainly.
In Other News...
Cowboys Stay Alive In NFC East But One Problem Keeps Growing
The Cowboys got a little help around the NFC East over the weekend, with losses elsewhere keeping them in the division race even after another setback of their own. It is the kind of middle-of-the-pack reality Dallas has lived with too often lately, where the standings can look better on Monday than the football did on Sunday, and where the margin for error keeps shrinking as the season moves on.
Under Shane Schottenheimer, the bigger concern is the same one that keeps surfacing after each uneven stretch: this team has not done a good enough job putting wins together in back-to-back weeks. The defense has its own issues to sort out, too, especially the absence of takeaways, and the longer those problems linger the more the conversation shifts from surviving the division race to what kind of changes might be waiting beyond it. [Read more 🡒]
Cowboys Outlook On Pickens And Von Miller Is Changing Fast
George Pickens has quickly become one of the more interesting players in the Cowboys long-range planning. With his recent performances showing real improvement and timely production, he has started to look like the kind of player who can push himself into the conversation when Dallas starts sorting through its offseason priorities, especially among the players tied to the 2027 contract window.
Von Miller, meanwhile, has brought a very different kind of conversation to the table. His early impact this season has been limited, and so far his presence has not noticeably lifted the pass rush around him, which matters for a team still trying to figure out how much value there is beyond the name on the back of the jersey. The Cowboys do not need to make any final calls yet, but the way those two players are trending is making the outlook shift faster than expected. [Read more 🡒]
Jake Ferguson Is Becoming A Real Cowboys Concern
Jake Ferguson has been one of the more important pieces of the Cowboys offense since taking over as a starter in 2023, giving the passing game a reliable middle-of-the-field target and enough production to earn a long-term commitment last July. But this season has been a different story, with too many drops and too many lapses in ball security starting to chip away at the trust he built as one of Dallas more dependable young weapons.
The concern goes beyond a single rough stretch, too. Fergusons fumbles have become part of a larger pattern over the past three years, and his blocking has drawn criticism as well, which only magnifies the sense that the Cowboys are not getting consistent all-around value from a player they expected to anchor the tight end spot. For a team that counts on him in multiple roles, the question now is whether this is just a slump or the start of a more serious issue in his fit moving forward. [Read more 🡒]