Bobhaze
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Like most Cowboys fans, I’m excited about our defense’s improvement this year. Their ability to get TOs (they are 2nd in the league with 14!) is a huge reason we are 5-1. It’s a young aggressive defense that is certainly on the upswing.
But if we are being honest without the fan glasses, our defense still has a very long way to go. If we’re going to have a defense that is playoff ready, we must improve defensively in some key areas, because even though our offense is top shelf, there are often playoff games where a great offense runs into a good or great D.
With that in mind, here are some areas we must improve if we’re going to have a serious playoff run:
But if we are being honest without the fan glasses, our defense still has a very long way to go. If we’re going to have a defense that is playoff ready, we must improve defensively in some key areas, because even though our offense is top shelf, there are often playoff games where a great offense runs into a good or great D.
With that in mind, here are some areas we must improve if we’re going to have a serious playoff run:
- Points per game, giving up 24.3. The most important defensive stat. Not terrible, but that needs to improve because the better teams we may face in the playoffs tend to be able to make your offense score less. We can’t always depend on the offense alone to win games.
- 3rd down conversion rate- we have improved to 9th in the league with a 35% rate. But it’s way better at home (31%) than the road (41%). That’s an important stat in the playoffs, especially if playing on the road.
- Our 6.3 yards per play is 29th in the NFL. (Without the 14 TOs we’ve had, we would all be talking about how we are still getting gashed for big plays)
- We are ranked 28th in yards per passing attempt with 7.4. This represents giving up too many big plays in the passing game. Like the Mac Jones bomb in the last two min vs pats last week.
- We have 11 sacks, which is ok, but that ranks us 23rd. We could really use an improvement there.