The Dallas Cowboys have lost four straight games to the San Francisco 49ers, and that fact alone isn’t even really the main reason the Cowboys are seen as significant underdogs for the latest rematch. That would be more due to the 49ers being tied for the league lead with seven wins while making no excuses for the rash of injuries they always seem to overcome.
The 49ers started the season 6-0 with wins over all three of their division rivals in the books by week five, beating the Rams in Australia
in week one, the Cardinals in week three, and Seahawks in Seattle in week five.
A winning standard and a high level of effort and execution have been evident from the 49ers under Kyle Shanahan for a very long time now. The Cowboys have come into these matchups against the49ers with talented rosters, even home field advantage as well, but different iterations of coaching staffs that haven’t stacked up. This has led to lowlights like a season ending on Ezekiel Elliott playing center and snapping the football, or Dak Prescott having to fight both the 49ers defense and the sun in his own stadium.
Throw in the Green Bay Packers, and they along with the 49ers tell the complete story of Cowboys playoff failures in recent times. The last Cowboys playoff loss to a team that wasn’t one of these sides was in 2018, to the Rams. Their last one before that was 2009, to the Vikings.
Despite the Packers having the more recent playoff win against the Cowboys at JerryWorld, it’s the 49ers that give the peak behind the curtain into the failures of America’s Team. Each loss from the 2021 playoffs to the 2024 regular season loss (the only one of the current streak against the 49ers that came in Santa Clara) can be attached to a season where the Cowboys made coaching changes in the offseason.
The Cowboys beat the 49ers at home in Mike McCarthy’s first season back in 2020, but missed the playoffs. Making the tournament the following year, despite losing in the Wild Card at home 23-17 to these 49ers, was seen as enough progress from year one to two under McCarthy to keep the brain trust of Kellen Moore as OC and Dan Quinn as DC in place for 2022. The Cowboys matched the 49ers in a lot of ways in that 2021 playoff loss statistically, but threw the ball 43 times compared to 21 rushes at just 3.7 yards per carry, and also committed 14 penalties.
The same coaching staff and same 12-5 Cowboys the next year had to earn their trip to the 49ers by winning a Monday night Wild Card game at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Even having this momentum on their side did little to help how they came out against the 49ers, still looking overmatched and losing 19-12. The Cowboys defense didn’t allow a touchdown until the fourth quarter when Christian McCaffrey broke a 9-9 tie with the score that proved to be the game winner.
This time around, Kellen Moore didn’t survive the loss, as the Cowboys moved on and hired Brian Schottenheimer as OC, while Moore went to the Chargers. After all the unforgettable toxic back and forth about Moore no longer being the right fit because he didn’t run the football enough to “rest the defense”, year one under McCarthy and Schottenheimer ended with the team falling behind 34-10 at home in the playoffs and having to throw the ball 60 times. That year’s Cowboys also lost 42-10 to the 49ers on primetime in week five, the worst loss to the 49ers in franchise history.
This time around, Quinn was the coordinator that did not survive the embarrassment, and the Cowboys hired Mike Zimmer as defensive coordinator. All this got the Cowboys was a closer regular season loss to show against the 49ers in week eight, losing on the road again 30-24. By season’s end with no playoff berth in sight, McCarthy was not brought back, making way for Schottenheimer to become the current head coach.
The bar to clear of expectations is low for Schotty in his first head coaching matchup against Shanahan and the model of consistency 49ers, which is ultimately the first problem with how standards have slipped in Big D. Just giving his team a chance to win by doing what Jerry Jones said earlier in the week it would take, stitching together the absolute best of what the Cowboys have done all at different times in all three phases, would be a huge win – even if that doesn’t manifest on the scoreboard.
Anything short of an actual win in the books though would leave the Cowboys with even more dirt to dig out of to make the playoffs, backed into the familiar position of searching for their first back-to-back wins deep into November around Thanksgiving time again. The Cowboys are not in good company with the Jets, Dolphins, Titans, winless Chargers, Commanders, Saints, and Cardinals as the only other teams to either not have consecutive wins at any point this season. Meanwhile, the 49ers have already secured a six-game winning streak to start this season for the second year in a row, and have had a streak of six games or longer in all but one season since 2022.
The 49ers have earned the right to look at this as any other game and come in with confidence to separate from the Cowboys early before thinking about the Vikings, Seahawks, and Rams in three of the next four weeks. The Cowboys have the unenviable task of coming out with their hair on fire and pulling out all the stops to score an upset, looking to do so against an opponent they’ve been outclassed by four times in a row.
This applies to both on the field and on the sidelines, and how each side either helps or hurts the Cowboys this Sunday is something to bookmark as a potential turning point for the entire organization yet again. A win would be the Cowboys first against an opponent with a winning record since Week 12 of last season against the Eagles, a comeback from down 21-0 that carries a lot of weight when it comes to finding an example of a Schottenheimer-led team showing fight and winning.
That too could be at jeopardy with a bad loss to the 49ers, as the more recent examples of the Cowboys having to fight came by way of trying to not blow a lead against the Cardinals and failing, and just hanging on against the Colts.
Interestingly enough, the 49ers also had a 14-0 lead against the Cardinals this season and saw Arizona cut it to 29-27 in the fourth quarter, but unlike the Cowboys, they closed it out with another touchdown to win it on their terms. The only other common opponent coming into this game favors the 49ers on all fronts too, as they had to deal with four full quarters of Jayden Daniels when hosting the Commanders, something the Cowboys only got one half of. The 49ers flexed in primetime and led 23-3 in the third quarter, winning 23-17.
A Cowboys loss would see the 49ers tie the Cardinals in beating the Cowboys for a fifth straight time, and both teams would trail only the Broncos for longest active streaks against the Cowboys. The Broncos have beaten the Cowboys eight straight times, and you guessed it, are another team these 2026 49ers have beaten 24-14 this season.
There’s a lot working against the Cowboys this week, injuries included, and if coaching is yet again one of them in a big way to doom this team to a similar fate of 2025, we could very well be talking about the 49ers as catalysts for change in Dallas on this front by season’s end.
