Sturm: Morning After

[rocboy22]

Originally Posted by bbailey423

ok....if we should stop believing what comes out of his mouth....should we then believe what he actually does? The fact that in the prime of the careers of Romo, Ware, Witten, Ratliff etc....we have ONE.....ONE OL...that could find a starting job in a quality organization...should we look at that as proof that he believes in this OL?

huh? of course not. why would the fact that we have one OL who could start somewhere else prove that jerry believes in this OL?

[DFWJC]

Sturn has been consistently good this year; really enjoy reading his stuff, even if the truth hurts.

[dirt]

Article sent a chill down my spine as to the possible hopelessness of our future under jerruh. Cowboys are like the little dutch boy trying to plug holes in the dike. They will get the o line fixed and it will be time to replace romo ware and witten. Round and round it goes

[ScipioCowboy]

I don't which prospect I find more troubling--that it had to get this bad before the Cowboys realized they had serious problems along their offensive line, or that the Cowboys thought they could remedy their problems with Bernadeau, Livings, and Costa.

[dirt]

Think part two is most scary! Question is does the front office just think they are smarter than everybody else that Livings et al is a viable upgrade

[Eskimo]

I kind of find it funny that he takes the Cowboys FO to task on signing Livings and Bern to help patch holes on a bad offensive line. The reason it is funny is that they were the two best OL on the field yesterday. And many criticize Costa but he turned in the best performance by a Cowboys OL in close to a decade against the Ravens in the one game he started and finished this year. Getting him back and pushing Bern back to OG will make this OL a lot better. That is the 3 players who most were critical about at the start of the season may just be okay in the end. Now let's see what the real problem is.

The biggest problem was Derrick Dockery who is a horrific OG. Jerry signed him because he didn't want to pay Holland who is a much better player. The Cowboys FO admitted as much when they tried to sign Holland after the workout but signed Dockery when they couldn't come to agreeable terms. Jerry looks like a damn idiot now with Dockery playing a horrifically bad game. Now hopefully Costa's return or Killer's return could push Bern back to OG and Dockery back on the bench. I would still be strongly in favor of signing Holland and releasing Dockery, though.

Right next to him is Doug Free who we are paying $8M/yr to be outplayed by a basketball player we signed off of someone else's PS who was forced into action by injury. Free may not give up a sack or a QB hit on nearly every play but he seemed to be giving up a QB pressure on nearly every other play yesterday and that is pathetically bad. I know he shouldn't need assist when going up against scrub pass rushers but he did and he does so we should help him whenever he is out there with a chip block. I find it odd that Free who is a bit of a finesse player by nature really struggles on combination blocks - he often doubles the wrong guy or alternately doesn't help out at all on a double team when he is supposed to be the main blocker on that guy. Regardless, Free should be put on the bench as soon as Tyron is healthy enough to play again as he is frightfully bad. The other possibility would be to move Ryan Cook back to RT and away from Center where he is a horrific run blocker.

I still think our best lineup year's end if I get what I want:

Smith Livings Killer Holland Parnell

I just think what is wrong with Free seems to be getting worse and worse and I have very little faith that it can be corrected. I don't care how much he makes because he is going to get Romo killed. The same is true of Dockery and I don't want to see Cook back at Center again this year.

[T-RO]

Eskimo, Sturm was completely on-target that the Livings and Bernie signings were feeble bandaids...and ones where we overpaid. The issue is that it's been obvious to anyone knowledgeable about the NFL that the o-line has been a train wreck for 3 years. And aside from the Smith drafting, Jerry's done little about it but dumpster dive.

Sturm assessed it correctly: all of linemen who finished that game Sunday are scrubs. All of them.

[Eskimo]

Originally Posted by T-RO

Eskimo, Sturm was completely on-target that the Livings and Bernie signings were feeble bandaids...and ones where we overpaid. The issue is that it's been obvious to anyone knowledgeable about the NFL that the o-line has been a train wreck for 3 years. And aside from the Smith drafting, Jerry's done little about it but dumpster dive.

Sturm assessed it correctly: all of linemen who finished that game Sunday are scrubs. All of them.

I think Livings has been above average this year.

I think Bern started out terrible but recently has been about average the last month or so.

Smith has been below average this year but was good at RT last year.

Cook has been okay in pass protection but has been horrific as a run blocker making him a poor Center overall but he was never part of the plan this year.

Costa was really good in the one game he actually played.

Dockery and Free are terrible this year.

So the parts of the team where we invested at Tackles have had the worst performing planned starters. In contrast, Costa and Livings have been good when on the field while Bern started out bad but has been playing okay recently - this was supposed to be the weak part of the OL plan. I think some of it is just bad luck with Smith and Free being this bad and all the injuries at Center.

I do agree the OL has been systemically under-invested in because Jerry once had success with low round draft picks and UDFAs back in the early 90s but that was just incredible luck that he can't duplicate. I like the draft pick of Smith and we need to invest more 2nd to 4th rounders in the lines if we want to have a better interior. However, I also don't think the solution is to sign $10M/yr OGs or high first rounders on interior OL. There has to be somewhere in the middle between the two strategies where a OL coach is given enough raw material to work with so that we can have success offensively.

[JakeCamp12]

Originally Posted by dirt

Article sent a chill down my spine as to the possible hopelessness of our future under jerruh. Cowboys are like the little dutch boy trying to plug holes in the dike. They will get the o line fixed and it will be time to replace romo ware and witten. Round and round it goes

This is the sad part of this era of the team. We had no plan on drafts every year and neglect important positions like OLine, DLine, Safety and constantly pick projects (AOA, Stanback, Quincy) that never develop and then play games in the draft by trading up and down the board to acquire 10 7th round picks that never play for the team, so we then spend entire drafts on special teams or looking at one position. It is really frustrating to me to watch such great players like Witten, Ware and Romo have to spend their prime years making up for all of these mistakes. I can't even imagine what Romo must feel like physically this year with the beating he takes each weekend. It surprises me he can even get out of bed most days. The Jerry Jones era after Jimmy left will always be known as the Dark Ages for me.

[dirt]

I think it goes back to the lack of identity. Teams like the Ravens and Steelers have a philosophy and identity and draft accordingly. It even goes so far as when you read some draft gurus reports they will call a guy a "power blocker in the Ravens mode" You can almost predict which players certain teams will select before or during the draft process while you never know who Jerruh will fall in love with

[Gaede]

I agree. Dockery is god-awful. Having him next to Free and a 3rd string center is just about the worst-case scenario for this team.

We need Costa back, badly. Crazy as that would've sounded last year. That's how truly horrible this OL is right now.

[Reality]

Originally Posted by rocboy22

we really should stop acting as if Jerry truly believes everything that comes out of his mouth.

One day people will get this

Jerry's foot could be cut off and run over and he would still say everything is fine and that he expects to be healed and ready for the next game.

One of the rules of business is always keep the negative internal and promote the positive in public.

#reality

[slomoxn]

Originally Posted by Reality

One day people will get this

Jerry's foot could be cut off and run over and he would still say everything is fine and that he expects to be healed and ready for the next game.

One of the rules of business is always keep the negative internal and promote the positive in public.

#reality

Sort of like Bernie Madoff, and Enron executives.