The first suspect here is coaching, starting with MM. It is one buck that stops with him. It was clear almost from the beginning that the yellow laundry was falling at an alarming pace. No effective measures were taken. The players themselves. While some bad calls happen virtually every game, they do balance out in the long run, as the very close number of penalties against & in favor of Dallas indicates. What surfaced, especially against the 49ers, was an obvious failure of the Cowboys players to have self-discipline on the field.
Lack of discipline. Those are Jerry & Stephen. Why them? The unique structure of the Cowboys means that the players are not ultimately accountable to the coaches. Their retention by the team & even to an extent their place on the depth chart are determined by the owners, not the staff. That is a major flaw for Dallas.