Dak Prescott aimed his criticism at the Dallas Cowboys’ locker room after a 27-23 win over the Colts that moved Dallas to 4-5 but repeated the discipline problems from the Week 8 overtime loss in Arizona. The Cowboys were flagged multiple times, including a 15-yard penalty on DeMarvion Overshown. The question now is whether Brian Schottenheimer’s staff could fix it.

“Absolutely,” Prescott said when asked if the penalties were frustrating. “I started by saying, you get in your own way, you make mistakes, and you make these games closer than they have to be. Last week we were not able to overcome it, this week we did. It’s—we can’t do that; we can’t have this many penalties, especially on offense. I don’t know the number on defense. But I know on our side of the ball, that’s purely unacceptable. We’re better than that, from pre-snap top combative to however you want to categorize the penalties.

“That’s way too many of them. And we’re fortunate to be able to fix them in a win.”

Between the two teams, 23 penalties piled up for more than 200 yards, and Dallas accounted for 14 of them for 153 yards.

None of this is new. Jones sounded the alarm back in the preseason, calling penalties the “real difference makers.”

Head coach Brian Schottenheimer has seen it too. After the Week 7 game against the Eagles, he said, “I do think that, again, at the end of the day, it was five penalties for us, none for them early in the game. But we have to be better.”

Week 8 didn’t offer much relief. Dallas drew seven flags for 45 yards, which looks tame next to the 11 at Green Bay and the 14 against Indianapolis.

However, one can argue that the penalties in the Colts game were a bit too much. Quinnen Williams forced a fumble in the fourth quarter, and the team celebrated. However, Dallas ended up getting an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, and the offense lined up at their own 15-yard line after the drive, when they could have lined up on their 30.

Ridiculously enough, the celebration wasn’t the problem. An inactive DeMarvion Overshown also joined the celebration. Since he had been ruled out, he was not supposed to take the field during the game. That counts as unsportsmanlike conduct, too.

The mistakes are costing money, too. After the overtime loss to the Cardinals, the Cowboys were fined a combined $46,883 for three separate plays.

Speaking on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Schottenheimer said the team is working to rein it in.

“We talked a ton about penalties, but it is really important that you talk about- there are two types of penalties—we’ve talked about this before on the show,” Schottenheimer said. “You know, there are pre-snap penalties that can’t happen. We know that. Yeah, you can’t jump offsides. We’re jumping offsides way too much on defense…”

“We definitely point them out, we definitely coach them, and our guys are receptive to the things we are saying. And there are penalties in practice that we remove guys and take them out and things like that because the unfortunate part is penalties hurt the entire team.”

The frustrating part is how much the team is doing right otherwise. The offense piled up more than 500 yards, including 335 through the air from Dak Prescott. He also scored two touchdowns.

With everyone watching Dallas this season, the big question is whether the Cowboys can clean up the flags before they cost them something bigger.