WoodysGirl
09-25-2012, 02:09 PM
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
In the 27th game under Jason Garrett, the Cowboys have reached an all-new low in a very vital department for their offense on Sunday against a defense that was quite generous to the New York Giants the week before.
It is the concept of "winning 1st Down". It simply means that as an offense, the play that is valued least by the general public is so important to the minds that call plays. If you win 1st Down, then you set up a variety of options for 2nd and 3rd Down. However, if you lose 1st Down, as the Cowboys did on a regular basis, you eliminate most of your creative options and simply fall into a "we need yardage badly" posture which results in the invitation of blitzes, mixed up coverages, and the advantage swings heavily to the defense.
In a way, the Cowboys are losing the fundamental struggles in football in these last two weeks in completely different ways. In Seattle, it was falling behind and allowing the undermanned offensively Seahawks to dictate the style and pace of most of the contest. In this game, the score was never a major issue, but every 1st and 10 situation for the offense led to 3rd and a mile.
Since Jason Garrett has been coach, no single game made a bigger mess out of 1st Down than Sunday. In fact, only 3 times under Garrett has the offense not been under 9 yards in the "Average yards to go on 2nd Down" category. Those 3 games were, at Philadelphia last year (9.88), the home game against Washington in 2011 (9.76), and the game at San Francisco (9.04). Otherwise, in all of the other games, the Cowboys were inside 9, and most of the time even inside 8 yards to go. The best work ever under Garrett was Thanksgiving of 2010 when they only had 6.04 yards to go on 2nd Down.
But, Sunday, they went backwards on 1st Down. Then, they had penalties. By the time they actually snapped the ball on 2nd Down, they were at a shocking 11.3 yards to go on 2nd Down. 11.3! Not only is it the worst under Garrett, it is the worst by a healthy margin of a yard and a half. Shocking. Long 2nd Downs usually lead to long 3rd Downs and in this case an average of 9.5 yards to go on 3rd Down. Not the recipe for a win, but because of some field position generosity where the Cowboys were beneficiaries of some short fields and the ineptness of the Bucs' offense, the Cowboys still won.
Read alot more: http://sturminator.blogspot.com/2012/09/decoding-garrett-week-3-tampa-bay.html
In the 27th game under Jason Garrett, the Cowboys have reached an all-new low in a very vital department for their offense on Sunday against a defense that was quite generous to the New York Giants the week before.
It is the concept of "winning 1st Down". It simply means that as an offense, the play that is valued least by the general public is so important to the minds that call plays. If you win 1st Down, then you set up a variety of options for 2nd and 3rd Down. However, if you lose 1st Down, as the Cowboys did on a regular basis, you eliminate most of your creative options and simply fall into a "we need yardage badly" posture which results in the invitation of blitzes, mixed up coverages, and the advantage swings heavily to the defense.
In a way, the Cowboys are losing the fundamental struggles in football in these last two weeks in completely different ways. In Seattle, it was falling behind and allowing the undermanned offensively Seahawks to dictate the style and pace of most of the contest. In this game, the score was never a major issue, but every 1st and 10 situation for the offense led to 3rd and a mile.
Since Jason Garrett has been coach, no single game made a bigger mess out of 1st Down than Sunday. In fact, only 3 times under Garrett has the offense not been under 9 yards in the "Average yards to go on 2nd Down" category. Those 3 games were, at Philadelphia last year (9.88), the home game against Washington in 2011 (9.76), and the game at San Francisco (9.04). Otherwise, in all of the other games, the Cowboys were inside 9, and most of the time even inside 8 yards to go. The best work ever under Garrett was Thanksgiving of 2010 when they only had 6.04 yards to go on 2nd Down.
But, Sunday, they went backwards on 1st Down. Then, they had penalties. By the time they actually snapped the ball on 2nd Down, they were at a shocking 11.3 yards to go on 2nd Down. 11.3! Not only is it the worst under Garrett, it is the worst by a healthy margin of a yard and a half. Shocking. Long 2nd Downs usually lead to long 3rd Downs and in this case an average of 9.5 yards to go on 3rd Down. Not the recipe for a win, but because of some field position generosity where the Cowboys were beneficiaries of some short fields and the ineptness of the Bucs' offense, the Cowboys still won.
Read alot more: http://sturminator.blogspot.com/2012/09/decoding-garrett-week-3-tampa-bay.html