ARLINGTON, Texas — This one is going to sting the Dallas Cowboys for a long while. For the second time in four days, they were tasked with defeating a winless team, and this time it was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at AT&T Stadium — a different vibe from playing the scrappy Texans with arguably the best defense in the league down in Houston.

But, they couldn't, and found themselves in yet another dogfight that mirrored what happened at NRG Stadium on Sunday, only worse, because they couldn't climb out of the hole they dug for themselves and fell 24-16 to the wildly underpowered Buccaneers.

The frustration spilled over into the staging area as well, after the game, when a driver for a contracted car service yelled out "embarrassing" as Dak Prescott walked past, leading to an exchange between the two that Prescott took exception to, but not necessarily because of the opinion itself.

"I know when he said it, I just happened to look at him, and at that point, you know, he looked away, and then when I turned my head back, he said something else," Prescott explained. "And so that's the part that, as a man, feel free to speak your mind, but speak it, and don't cower away from the reaction that you're going to get.

"So, if you're saying it's embarrassing, say it's embarrassing. If you're saying it to me, then say it to me, you know what I mean? Don't go back on it. 
So that's all that was, and I hate that it's even being talked about, to be honest with you."

Other things were talked about as well in his post-game interview with the media, a lot of it, actually, and the rest of it centered on what the Cowboys were unable to do against Todd Bowles' defense and a Tampa Bay offense that featured an undrafted rookie quarterback, and not Baker Mayfield.

So, in Prescott's opinion, was the loss indeed embarrassing? The All-Pro quarterback described it as being very near it, but then added why he'd stop short of using that specific word.

"To use the word embarrassing; it's tough. I feel like I'm discrediting the NFL if I use that and particularly the Tampa Bay Bucs, the great Todd Bowles, a coach, and defensive-coached team. The guy's been a winning coach for a long time, whether he's been a head coach or a defensive coordinator. That's the plan and what they did tonight is the reason for that. To say embarrassing, I think I'd be discrediting them.

"But, we were definitely supposed to win this game, that we're supposed to have on paper or whichever way you want to look at it. I think Schotty said it best in the locker room, in this league, you've got to win the games you're supposed to win. When a winless team comes into your home stadium on a Thursday night primetime game, yeah, we're supposed to win that. It sucks and right up there close to embarrassing, but I don't know if I would say that."

He went on to admit that the offensive showing was "horrible" and far from the standard they've set for themselves, forced to punt routinely after their first offensive drive and suffering two tip drill interceptions.

One occurred on a critical drive on the Bucs' side of the field and the other with the game on the line and the offense driving to potentially score and tie — and a lost fumble on a kick return that Tampa Bay turned into a touchdown.

The giveaways led to ten of the Buccaneers' 24 points, and then there was the dropped interception that would've easily been a pick-six by DaRon Bland to give the Cowboys a chance to go for two points to tie the game on 3rd-and-8 with a little more than five minutes remaining in regulation.

All told, the Cowboys lost the game in all three phases of football, but Prescott isn't blaming the NFL schedulers for what happened against the Buccaneers.

"No, we can all probably try to make some excuses, but the reality of it is we just didn't get the job done," he said. "I'm not going to blame it on travel. I am not going to blame it on a quick week. It's the NFL. We had three or four days to prepare for this one, and so did they. 
And unfortunately, they beat us in the preparation, and it showed today."

The ultimate optimist, even as he's visibly and audibly frustrated, Prescott isn't mailing it in, however, with 12 regular season games remaining on the schedule and a mini-bye week to assess what happened and what needs to change before visiting the Packers in Green Bay.

"Thankfully, it's only five games into the season," he said. "Thankfully, our division doesn't look like somebody has taken off and run with it, and everything's still in front of us, so that's the beauty of it, and that's the unique part about an NFL season, and these divisions. You know, we'd feel a lot worse if somebody in our division was 5-0 right now.

"So, having pretty much everything still out in front of us, gives us, gives myself, all the guys in the locker room, a lot of confidence about what's in front of us."

That's true, but more than one thing can be true at the same time, and the other truth is that the Cowboys, as Prescott readily confessed, thought they could just show up and the win would be theirs against the Buccaneers.

A harsh reminder was served that the NFL doesn't work like that, and any given Sunday is a very real thing in this league.

"It's these kind of games that you feel like you should just walk in and win, and I guess some of us may feel that way, and they've got to find a way to make them mean just as much as the big games. The teams that have a lot of wins are the ones that, when we look back at the end of the year and we're looking at seeding, hell, if we would've gotten the game that we were supposed to win, we would be a higher seeding or we'd be better.

"And that's to Schotty's point: if you just got to handle your business in this league and that means winning the games you're supposed to win and that'll help a lot."

They now have 10 days to sort through the mess to try and come out clean on the other side of all this, fighting the Packers to get to 3-3 and the Eagles to move to 4-3 on the season.

Anything less could begin sinking the ship as the middle of the season approaches.