Mailbag: Getting over the 49ers’ fears from the past?

As Cowboys fans, we don’t like how bad the team has been lately against the 49ers. There are a lot of new players every season, though. Do the players really feel the same worry? Do those losses from last year roll over to this year? If so, how do they get past the memories of past mistakes in their minds? – Ted Hoffman/From Fort Worth, TX

Nick: Really don’t know if it’s in my head. It’s true for the fans, but I’m not sure if it’s true for the players. If it is, we’d never know. It looks more like a physical thing than anything else if you only look at the last three games with San Francisco. The 49ers are a very physical team, and as we saw last year with the Cowboys and again this year with the Eagles, they don’t do well against teams that like to run the ball, get physical, and move people off their blocks and off the ball. During those three games, the 49ers made life hard for the Cowboys in the tackles. Now, I do think that many people forget that these three games have not all been one-sided. From 2021 to 2022, the 49ers beat the Cowboys by six points. The next year, I thought the Cowboys were the better team overall, but Tony Pollard got hurt in what is now known as an illegal hit, which changed the whole game, and the Cowboys lost by 14 points. It was a huge mess last year. They didn’t lose their minds, though, because they went on to win seven of the next eight games. So I think that these things are sometimes thought to be bigger than they really are. The 49ers have been tough for this team to play against.

Isaak: Lessons learned in one season do not carry over to the next… unless you let them. To put it another way, it depends on how you handle things. If the Cowboys keep talking about what the 49ers did to them in the previous three games, I think it might make them push harder. I saw that when the Cowboys went to Green Bay to play the Packers—they were desperate to get the win for Mike McCarthy (everyone involved admitted that after the loss). But taking a mental method. It will all come down to how well they play on the field if they don’t let the past get in the way of their minds. The Cowboys have been having trouble with that this season. Most of the time, the better team doesn’t win these games, and the fact that both teams are hurt makes you wonder who is the better team right now (the 49ers are below.500, after all). It seems more even than ever, so do what you need to do and forget about the past.