Mike McCarthy understands times have changed, but he still wasn’t thrilled about his player lashing out at a reporter.
The day after his Dallas Cowboys dropped their Week 8 matchup to the 49ers and cornerback Trevon Diggs took out the frustration on a beat reporter, the head coach offered a “sign of the times” analysis on his star cornerback’s blowup and his team’s disappointing results.
“I think we have to be better in those moments, I always talk about staying on a high road,” McCarthy said, per ESPN.
“But I’m not ignorant or naive to the fact that this generation, that’s part of the world they live in, the social media world,” McCarthy continued. “You have to manage that. That’s part of being a professional athlete and that’s part of representing this organization properly.”
The Cowboys (3-4) have dropped consecutive games to Detroit and San Francisco, with their bye week sandwiched between.
They showed more fight in Week 8 with the sting of the Lions’ 47-9 Week 6 clobbering still fresh, though the short-handed 49ers had no problem putting up points of their own— scoring three touch downs en route to a 30-24 victory.
Diggs, now in his fifth season with Dallas, had plenty to be disappointed about. And that was before he checked his phone.
Mike Leslie, the Cowboys’ beat reporter for WFAA in Dallas, posted a video of the two-time Pro Bowl cornerback seemingly running at half pace while Niners tight end George Kittle barreled toward the end-zone on a 43-yard reception that would set up San Francisco’s go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter.
“What is Trevon Diggs doing on this play?” Leslie’s caption on X read.
Between the time the post went up and the end of the game, Diggs got his hands on the video.
Before the media were allowed into the locker room for their post-game interviews, Diggs came out and accosted the reporter.
“That’s what you took from that?” Diggs asked. “Out of that whole play, that’s what you took from that? You don’t know football. You can’t do nothing that I do. You can’t go out there and do nothing. Stay in your lane, buddy. Stop trying me, dog.”
Leslie told Diggs to “talk about it more,” to which the cornerback replied, “talk about deez nuts.”
McCarthy wasn’t the only Cowboys’ coach troubled by the interaction.
As defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer said, “Obviously it’s important that we all be professionals with it and it’s not the kind of thing that we want to do. You probably shouldn’t be reading tweets right after the game…”
Diggs, for his part, defended his actions on “The Edge with Micah Parsons.”
“I just let my emotions get the best of me,” Diggs said. “But at the end of the day, [that] still doesn’t make it right for anybody just to be saying anything, just trying to throw dirt on your name or make you seem like you’re doing bad or a bad job. Because I felt like I played my hardest game yesterday.”
The cornerback and his Cowboys teammates look to get back on track Sunday against the Falcons in Atlanta at 1 p.m.