Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn talked to reporters on Monday to discuss the team's loss to the Buffalo Bills.

It was yet another test failed on the Cowboys' apparent boogeyman of the 2023 season: The road. 

However, Quinn isn't having any of that as another trip peeks its head in the horizon in Week 16. Instead, the Cowboys defensive coordinator pointed out two other things as the reason why the team laid an egg against the Bills.

"The biggest impact this game was our tackling and our ball hawking," Quinn told reporters. "We're excellent at those two things and we had a poor performance in both, you know, we had one forced fumble that we thought we got out, didn't get a recovery, but just our tackling wasn't up to the standard we've set. That is our secret sauce our tackling and our ball hawking. And we didn't have it."

To provide some context to Quinn's honest assessment, consider this: The Cowboys missed 12 tackles versus the run on Sunday's loss. Since the bye week, they had 15 in eight games. 

And to make it even worse, nine different Cowboys missed tackles, per PFF. Backup safety Juanyeh Thomas, who saw plenty of playing time due to Malik Hooker's injury, missed the most with three.

"And that has nothing to do with home, away, turf or grass, open air or dome, East West, night, day, Saturn, Mars," Quinn doubled down."You got to have those two things down, man. (…) And I'm awful proud of our group. So, to not have a performance that included those two things at our best, that was disappointing."

Tackling might get better for the Cowboys as they get healthier. Missing starting nose tackle Johnathan Hankins removed an important element from Quinn's run defense and it didn't get better with missing Hooker at free safety, which in turn forced Quinn to play Jayron Kearse upo high instead of his usual position in the box.

That's three levels of defense affected by a couple of key injuries! However, it is worth noting that teams can exploit Quinn's undersized defense, which he has streamlined for speed and explosiveness while sacrificing weight.

"We also play a lot of five down to try to cover the five inside guys," Quinn explained. "In this instance, a good bit of those plays were more about the outside than they were on the inside, talking about the missed tackles specifically."

The lack of size is highly unlikely to be fixable as the Cowboys approach the final stretch of the regular season. If they're to make up for it, they'll have to do it like Quinn built the unit: Elite tackling and elite takeaways.

That's what they'll need in the playoffs, regardless of who they face. Otherwise, it could be an early trip back home in January.

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They can realistically win it.