The Win Saved the Season. The Film Is Ugly: 14 Penalties, 153 Yards and a Cowboys Week of Teachable Moments

The standings will take Sunday's result without complaint: Cowboys 27, Colts 23, Dallas at 4-5 and alive. The film is harder to look at. Cowboys Wire's Monday analysis called it one of the ugliest wins of the season, and the inventory is long — a sloppy snap that led to a late missed field goal, a kickoff that failed to reach the landing zone, a fumble in the red zone followed by what the analysis called a half-hearted effort at retrieval, an out-of-uniform player celebrating on the field, sloppy routes, poor pass-protection footwork, and 14 penalties for 153 yards.

The game itself swung the same way. Dallas blew a 17-7 halftime lead and let Indianapolis take a 23-20 advantage inside the final two minutes, before Dak Prescott — 335 passing yards on the day, with CeeDee Lamb accounting for 195 receiving yards — drove the Cowboys to the game-winning touchdown in the final 1:37, the drive set up by a big Prescott completion to Ryan Flournoy. That is the part the Cowboys will keep. The rest is the week's work: the analysis found Dallas's motion-at-the-snap plays succeeded just 42 percent of the time, below the offense's 44 percent overall rate, while Prescott under center — used rarely this season — produced a 64 percent success rate, a split the coaching staff will have to explain if it does not grow.

Bill Parcells, the analysis recalled, was always toughest on his teams after sloppy wins, because a poorly played victory can teach the wrong lessons. Head coach Brian Schottenheimer's warmer methods have the roster's admiration; the question of the week is whether the correction lands anyway. The win gives Dallas the privilege of addressing the ugliness while salvaging the season — San Francisco, 7-1, visits AT&T Stadium on Sunday — but, as the analysis put it, the win does not absolve the ugliness.