The Cowboys played their first preseason game Saturday against the Denver Broncos, and guess what? Penalties were one of the most significant takeaways. 

It’s preseason, that is fine, but as something that was supposed to be addressed this offseason as a priority, they were flagged 17 times, a league-high in the first exhibition game.

The Cowboys did rest all but a handful of their starters, but 17 flags for 129 yards is too much. Mike McCarthy spoke about them after Saturday’s contest. “This is preseason. I don’t think this has anything to do with last year. But I didn’t like the number of penalties. I made it clear. I talked about it at halftime, and I talked about it briefly in there (the locker room). We’ll take a long look at it,” he said.

Well, the long look should have been during the off-season—starters or not; how does that happen during the first real game action since January? The Cowboys had nearly seven months to make this issue priority.

Although it is annoying and a problem, I will not say I’m concerned, and I will not be the one to harp on the first preseason game of the season when nearly nobody will start week one played; I will leave that to someone else. I wish it would have been less, and I wanted to touch on it since it was the topic of conversation at the end of the game Saturday. Also: the roughing the passer call against Sam Williams might have been the worst I have ever seen.

No excuse for 17 penalties; that is all we saw a season ago, “obviously, you guys get to write what you want,” said McCarthy. So here I am writing about the first preseason game and how I wish we saw fewer of them, but let’s continue to watch and see what happens as we advance.