Changes imminent as Payten's patience wears thin

Cowboys coach Todd Payten may have lost patience with members of his under-performing squad, suggesting flatly that changes will be looked at this week.

The 44-8 result was the biggest score in Titans' history while the Cowboys haven't conceded a bigger score since going down 48-4 to the Raiders in 2010.

"Across the board we just really lacked effort and drive," Payten said.

"I don't think we competed hard enough for long enough. The scoreboard reflected that. When things have gone against us we haven't handled it at all and it leads to points.

"We just lack a bit of resilience at the moment."

Asked if he will look at changes this week, he had no hesitation in answering "yep".

"We've spoken about being a team that competes and being accountable to each other and we're at that point (of making changes) at the moment," he said.

"We'll look at the vision, we'll talk as coaches and go from there."

Payten agreed the edge defence was a problem after the Titans' left edge attack had a field day but said it wasn't the primary problem.

"We missed far too many tackles today. Far too many tackles," he said.

"And that puts pressure on the edge so it's a bit of a snowball effect or cycle. I don't think it was our edge D that cost us the game, it was a lot of things before that."

Payten wanted the group to un-learn negative behaviours that have built up over time, but admitted he was unsure how long that could take.

"The good teams that have been at the top of the competition for a while now, when something goes against them, the first thought is about what's important next or what's important now," he said.

"They all dive into it physically and keep going until they get the ball back. At the moment we're going inside our own head, we're not communicating with our teammate and it's putting our team under pressure. It's a behaviour that's ingrained in us at the moment."

The form of young winger Murray Tualagi in his first game of the year was a rare bright spot, while Payten had measured support of the jobs done by Scott Drinkwater in moving to the halves and Val Holmes in shifting to his preferred fullback role.

"I thought Murray Tualagi did pretty well coming in," he said.

"I thought he carried strong, made some good decisions, that's one real positive.

"[Holmes] had some good moments. It's a different workload to playing on the wing, I thought at times he looked tired but he showed some really positive signs for the most part.

"Drinky played pretty well. He had some good moments. I thought he tackled ok when he had to tackle but again I'll have to look closely at it."

Payten was non-committal on the progress of injured skipper Michael Morgan and whether his shoulder will allow him to return to playing at all.

"Morgo trained today, he's going to be reassessed tomorrow and we'll go from there," he said.